


Signals Crossed

by statusquo_ergo



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: 7x11 rewrite, 7x12 rewrite, 7x13 rewrite, 7x15 rewrite, 7x16 rewrite, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fix-It, M/M, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-04-17 09:12:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14185683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Once Harvey's finally managed to clear his head enough to comprehend the fact that, yes, Donna actually did just kiss him (and, no, he's pretty sure he didn't invite it), it's obvious what he needs to do next.He really hopes Mike will understand.





	1. Hard Truths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter assumes a certain familiarity with the episode on which it’s based, i.e., “[Hard Truths](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s07e11)” (s07e11), but the rundown of some of the plotty shit I left out is that Harvey and Louis need to get Stanley Gordon’s (of Gordon Schmidt Van Dyke, the original incarnation of Pearson Specter Litt) permission to restructure the firm, Gordon refuses unless they bring him back to the firm as a name partner, Harvey and Donna decide that the firm needs a new senior partner to project an image of strength to the world and Donna takes it upon herself to set up a meeting with this guy named Kyle Clemente who she wants Harvey to hire, and Harvey tanks the interview because he’s mad at Donna for kissing him and then setting up the interview without running it by him first.

_I’m sorry, Harvey._

Harvey stares out the window.

_I’m sorry, Harvey. I just had to know._

His shoulders begin to ache for how heavily his arms hang at his sides.

_I just had to know._

She just…

She just had to know?

She just had to _know?_

What about what _Harvey_ needs? And what about what he _doesn’t_ need, huh, because he sure as shit doesn’t need _this._ God, and Mike, what’s he supposed to tell Mike? They’ve barely been together two months, and now _this?_ What the fuck is he supposed to do? What’s he supposed to _say?_ What _can_ he say, what can he say to possibly, maybe, if he’s very, very lucky, _ever_ make this turn out okay?

“Harvey,” Louis announces as he storms into the office, “I just got your voicemail. We need to figure out a way to stop Malik before—”

“It’s too late, Louis,” Harvey interrupts. “It’s done.”

He doesn’t have time for this.

“What?” Louis gapes. “That’s not possible.”

“It’s a done deal, Louis,” Harvey retorts, hoping for a strong undercurrent of “get the fuck out of my way.” “Jessica’s getting disbarred. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Well then, we need to—”

“I can’t talk about this right now, Louis,” Harvey snaps. So the hint wasn’t strong enough, fine. That’s fine. He can be direct.

Louis steps back with a bemused frown. “All right, look, Harvey,” he asserts, “I get that you’re shaken by this, and I am, too, but if this is really happening, we need to figure out how we’re gonna handle this, and we need to do that tonight.”

“I don’t care,” he bites out, doing his best to keep from actually biting Louis’s head off. “We’ll have to deal with it tomorrow.”

“Well, wait,” Louis presses, and god, the guy can’t just leave well enough alone. “What about Donna?”

What _about_ Donna. Harvey wheels on Louis, slamming his hand down on the desk to stop himself spinning a full three-sixty. “What about her?”

“Does she know what’s going on?” Louis asks, as though Harvey’s the one being slow in this scenario.

Right. Donna works here, too. She has a vested interest in these proceedings. She needs to know the situation to do her job; or try to, anyway.

“No, she doesn’t,” he says flatly. “And if you don’t mind, I’d rather you tell her yourself.”

Finally picking up what Harvey’s trying to throw in his face, Louis nods carefully, looking back over his shoulder as he walks out into the hall, maybe back to his own office, maybe to look for Donna. Harvey doesn’t really care; he won’t be getting any more work done tonight.

A whiskey on the rocks sounds real good right about now.

\---

Harvey spends nearly thirty seconds trying to turn his key in the lock before he admits to himself that his front door is already open. Yeah, well, things have been stressful lately; these sorts of things can slip through the cracks. It’s not as though the building doesn’t have great security.

“Hey.”

Halfway through dropping his briefcase in the closet, Harvey looks up toward the living room.

“Mike?”

Mike stands up from the sofa and takes a hesitant step forward. “Are you okay?” he asks cautiously. “Should I— Do you want me to leave, did you want to be alone?”

“No,” Harvey assures him, dropping his briefcase and shedding his suit jacket. “No, I’m glad you’re here. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

Everything is fine.

“Okay, well, even if that’s true,” Mike presses, “you look like you could use a drink.”

“Yeah,” Harvey agrees, “I was thinking the same thing.”

Mike dallies at the liquor cabinet for a second before he picks out the Macallan 18.

“Mike, I have to tell you something.”

“Hm,” Mike murmurs as he hunts down a couple of crystal glasses, and Harvey braces himself with the reminder that whatever bullshit is going on with Donna is probably going to get out sooner or later, and in the long run, it’s probably better if Mike hears it from him.

“Malik got Jessica disbarred.”

That didn’t come out right. Although to be fair, it’s important for Mike to know about that, too.

Still crouched in front of the liquor cabinet, Mike freezes for a moment before he stands with the glasses gripped tight in his hands.

“And what are you doing about it?”

Harvey shakes his head. “There’s nothing _to_ do, Mike, she’s moved on and we just need to accept it.”

“She sacrificed herself for us,” Mike challenges, “she sacrificed herself for the firm, she sacrificed herself for _me,_ and you want to just lie down and let it happen?”

“I get that you’re feeling guilty,” Harvey says, stepping forward and dropping his jacket over the back of the one of the armchairs. “And you’re right, it was your fault, but it was mine too. And Jessica made this decision for herself, and now it’s done, and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”

Mike braces his hands on top of the liquor cabinet and tenses his muscles, glaring down at the hardwood.

“I can’t just do nothing.”

“You’re not going to do nothing,” Harvey insists. “You’re going to do exactly what Jessica fought so hard for you to be able to do. You’re going to fight like hell for the firm, you’re going to take every case that comes across your desk and you’re going to work your magic on it. You’re going to look where no one else would think to and find what they don’t want you to find, and you’re gonna knock it out of the fucking park.”

Mike stares at him for a stilted moment before he laughs softly, letting his head drop between his shoulders and shaking it back and forth.

“God dammit, Harvey,” he sighs, “how did you do that?”

Harvey grins. “I just asked myself what Jessica would do.”

Mike bites his lip on a smirk and pulls one of the glasses toward himself to begin pouring.

It’s funny, Harvey thinks as he watches; Mike has been here a hundred times before if he’s been even once, he’s poured dozens of glasses of whiskey and scotch and gin and tonic, they’ve talked over god knows how many cases and verdicts and deals, and not once has it felt anything less than…integral. Familiar. Right.

A perfect fit.

“Move in with me,” Harvey says hastily. The whiskey nearly slips out of Mike’s hands as his shoulders jerk forward and he looks up, his eyebrows arched high on his forehead and his eyes widened to a frankly comical degree.

“ _What?_ ”

“Today was a shitty day,” he confesses, “and all I wanted to do when I left the office was come home and pour myself a whiskey on the rocks, and I came home, and…here you are. And I gotta tell you, Mike, it’s making me feel like everything’s gonna be okay.”

Mike closes his eyes, choking out a laugh and setting the whiskey back down on the table with a skidding _thunk._

“Harvey. I love you, alright—” He looks up abruptly. “You know that, right?”

“So you’ve said.”

Mike smirks. “Only ‘cause it’s true.”

Harvey smirks back and takes another step forward. “So what’s your point?”

“My point,” Mike says as he picks the whiskey bottle back up and finishes off Harvey’s drink, “is that I’m not saying no because I’m breaking up with you, or I don’t want to be with you anymore, or any of that crap, okay?”

It takes a decent amount of effort to keep his face from falling, but Harvey restricts himself to shaking his head. “But you are saying no.”

“Because _when_ I move in with you,” Mike expounds, offering the glass, “I want it to be because the time is right. Because we’re ready, not because you had a bad day and you’re scrambling for some quick fix.”

Harvey takes the offering with a tender smile, raising it to his lips and watching Mike pour another drink for himself.

“What did I ever do to deserve you.”

Mike reaches out to tap their glasses together when Harvey lowers his.

“You’re Harvey goddamn Specter.”

\---

So that new senior partner interview was a fucking disaster.

“Harvey,” Donna fumes, following him out to the elevators, riding down to the lobby, “we’re gonna have that talk, and we’re gonna have it right now.”

“Donna—”

“No,” she announces. “It is one thing to take it out on me, but what you did in that interview was horrible and selfish.”

“Okay,” Harvey bursts out, because she might be right about that, but it was some kind of backstabbing power play for her to schedule that interview with Kyle whatever-his-name-is without telling him, not to mention bringing the guy in this late at night and trying to blackmail Harvey into talking to him on the spot. “You wanna talk about what happened? Let’s talk about what happened. Because if anyone knows about selfish, it’s you.”

“You have some nerve saying that to me,” she seethes, her face beginning to flush, “when you know I have put you over me for years.”

“I don’t care what you’ve done for years!” Harvey cries. “You knew I was seeing someone, and you did that to me anyway.”

“I told you, Harvey,” she reminds him. “I needed to know.”

Oh, that is the last goddamn straw.

“ _You_ needed to know?” Harvey snaps. “Donna, you of _all_ people should know how I would react to something like that! You know how hard it’s been for me to live with what my mother did to my dad; I’ve struggled with that my entire life, you know how hard it is for me to—to _trust_ people, you know what it does to me when people _break_ that trust!”

“So keep trusting me,” Donna beseeches. “You and I, we are as close as two people can get, so trust me when I say that it didn’t mean anything. Harvey, I didn’t feel anything when I kissed you; whatever I thought might be there, it wasn’t, so if that’s what you’re worried about, you can just stop.”

His every instinct tells Harvey to keep pushing, to scream something else in her face, some scathing insult to rebuke such a stupid, stupid argument, but her eyes are fierce and her fists are clenched, her breathing already labored; she’s gearing up for the fight, she’s _waiting_ for him to bait her.

She really thinks she’s right. She really, really doesn’t get it.

“You think I’m worried that you’re in love with me?” he asks icily. “You think that after what you did to me, I’m worried that you might be suffering from some…tragically unrequited romantic fantasy?”

“I—”

“Because I don’t give a _shit_ whether or not you’re in love with me,” he cuts her off, “you had no right, _no right_ to do what you did. You had absolutely _no_ right to kiss me without my permission, without any warning, and whatever you were trying to figure out, it was _completely_ unfair of you to use me like that to do it.”

She’d better get it now.

Finally sinking back on her heels, finally dropping her guard, Donna sets her shoulders back and tries to recover some sense of poise, some shred of dignity; alright, so she’s figuring it out. She’s picking up the pieces. Harvey would throw her a bone to move things along, but he’s not really in the mood.

“Are you going to tell Mike?” she asks coolly. Harvey shakes his head.

“That’s really none of your business.”

“Hm,” she mutters. “Well, for what it’s worth, maybe you should stop being so furious with me and figure out why you’re so worried about telling him about us.”

“Well,” Harvey retorts snidely, “I’m not interested in your advice, Donna. As far as I’m concerned, your judgment sucks.”

Pressing her hand to her chest, the perfectly scandalized damsel in distress, Donna barely keeps from gasping at his brazenness, and he barely spares her a glance as he sweeps out the front doors.

Out on the street, Harvey sucks in a breath of city air and tilts his head back before he blows it out. Mike is probably at home right now.

Time to step it up.

\---

It takes maybe three seconds for Mike to open the door after Harvey knocks.

“Harvey,” he says brightly, but his whole demeanor sinks into concern as he takes in what must be Harvey’s haggard expression. “Harvey, what’s wrong?”

Harvey sets his jaw and looks Mike in the eye. “I need to tell you something.”

Nodding, Mike steps back to welcome him in.

“Yeah, of course,” he says tentatively. “Are you okay?”

As Mike closes the door, Harvey meets his gaze again.

“Donna kissed me.”

For a second, Mike just stares. Harvey’s heart sinks in his chest, but then Mike shakes his head quickly as though to clear water out of his ears and narrows his eyes.

“She what?”

“I walked in to tell her about Jessica getting disbarred,” Harvey explains carefully, “and before I knew it, she kissed me.”

“She kissed you?” Mike repeats. “When— Harvey, was that the night you asked me to move in with you, the night I was at your place when you got home?”

Harvey winces. “Yes, but Mike, I swear to you, I didn’t initiate it, I didn’t lead her on; I told her it was inappropriate, that she had no right to—”

“Harvey,” Mike cuts in, moving toward him and raising his hands haltingly, “I don’t think you _invited_ her to kiss you, I’m not— I don’t think you’re cheating on me, I think that was a horrible thing for her to do to you and she, of all people, she should’ve known better. But tell me honestly, did that have anything to do with why you asked me to move in with you?”

Did it? Harvey presses his lips together and turns his gaze away; maybe it did, probably it did. How could it not? He loves Mike so much; he tries not to think about it very often, tries not to bias himself about things that haven’t happened yet, things that haven’t even _started_ to happen, but in every vision he conjures of the future, it doesn’t take any effort at all to imagine Mike there, a part as integral as any other. But what sort of a start to their future together is that, based in guilt and insecurity? Thank god Mike had the foresight to turn him down, thank god one of them can be sane from time to time.

“I think so,” he decides. “I’m sorry, Mike, I am, I shouldn’t have done that. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to live with you someday, or that I don’t care about you, or that you’re just some kind of—convenience in my life.”

Mike’s brow is furrowed, his face a little pinched, and Harvey doesn’t know what to make of it but he doesn’t think he’d be doing either of them any favors trying to force some kind of response.

After awhile, Mike takes a breath and shakes his head.

“I didn’t think that,” he says. “I’ve never thought that. But Harvey, are you saying you waited two whole days to tell me what happened?”

Harvey isn’t sure where Mike is going with this, but it’s probably not in his best interest to lie, especially about something so easy to prove.

“I should have told you that night,” he admits. “I was going to, I meant to, but then I told you about Jessica, and after that, it just…” He sighs frustratedly, shoving his hand back through his hair. “I guess it just didn’t seem like the right time anymore.”

In the ensuing silence, Mike stares at him, a terrified staccato thrumming in Harvey’s ears for ages and ages until Mike’s eyes go soft, the lines in his forehead smoothing out as he steps closer, right into Harvey’s space.

“Harvey,” he murmurs, “were you afraid of what I would say?”

“No,” Harvey answers reflexively. At Mike’s skeptical glance, he tilts his head down, taking a moment to actually consider the question.

“Maybe I was. That whole day was so long, and then everything with Donna was so—confusing, and unexpected, I just, I didn’t know what to do.”

Mike hums under his breath. “And I bet it didn’t help that I was there when you got home,” he surmises, which is so ridiculous that Harvey can’t let it slide for even a second.

“Are you kidding,” he says, “you being there was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d been alone, probably downed that entire bottle all by myself with a gin and tonic on the side.”

Smiling weakly, Mike sets his hands on Harvey’s arms, sliding them around to the small of his back and lacing his fingers together.

“So I’m not gonna pretend it doesn’t hurt that you didn’t tell me when it happened,” he says. “But,” he carries on when Harvey starts to open his mouth, “I get why you didn’t. And I’m not angry at you for reacting the way you did. But just so you know, I am absolutely _furious_ with Donna right now, and if she ever does something like that again, _please_ tell me, because I don’t want you to be alone with something like this, this absolute fucking mess. I don’t want to put you through that again.”

Cradling Mike’s face in his hand, Harvey leans in to kiss him gently.

“Do me a favor?” he asks when they part.

Mike leans into his touch. “What?”

“Don’t say anything to Donna about this,” Harvey requests. “I want to take care of it myself.”

Tightening his grip, Mike pulls them closer together, holding Harvey against his chest.

“Promise me you’ll tell me if you need me.”

Harvey presses a firmer kiss to his mouth, breaking away with a smile.

“I promise.”

\---

The firm’s roof has always been the best place for quiet contemplation. There’s no question about it; everybody knows.

Standing close to the edge, Harvey wonders how many people have come up here to get their thoughts in order and ended up toying with the idea of jumping. Probably not many; they’re all pretty passionate by nature, but he’s reasonably sure none of them are quite that unbalanced.

The wind doesn’t quite blot out the clicking of Donna’s footsteps, and Harvey peers over the railing.

“I had a feeling you were up here.”

Of course she did.

“Well,” Harvey says coolly, “the reason I came up here was to be alone.”

Donna smiles. “I get it,” she says, and she probably does, but only partly. “You had a hard week. You got blindsided by Stanley Gordon, and you also got blindsided by me.”

Oh, well, this is a fun twist.

“Harvey, I crossed a line,” she informs him. “I put you in a horrible position with Mike, and if it’s caused you any problems—”

“Of course it’s caused me problems,” he cuts her off, because even if Mike is being the best partner, the best person he could possibly be, even if he’s handling this better than Harvey had any right to expect, Harvey isn’t in the mood to belittle how much he built the oncoming disaster up in his head ahead of time, how much undue stress it caused him. “I didn’t tell him what happened until two days after the fact.”

“How do you think that went over?” she asks. At least she has the good sense not to sound smug about it.

Still staring out at the cityscape below, he feels his mouth tug up in a little smile, the way it does sometimes when he thinks about how lucky he is that Mike’s chosen him. “I think he’s a god among men to forgive me the way he did.”

She nods, and he’d love to be able to forgive her so easily, he really would. “He cares about you.”

His eyes narrow against the breeze. “I know.”

She turns to him, hoping to meet his gaze, and he decides not to extend the olive branch.

“I messed with your life,” she begins firmly. “And I made you think that you couldn’t trust my judgment.”

It might be nice if she didn’t sound like she was ticking off items on a laundry list of her wrongdoings. Harvey supposes he should be glad to be getting this much, though, glad that he’s getting anything at all.

“I’ve never heard you say that before,” she continues. “I can’t go back and undo what happened, and even if I could, I don’t know what I’d do. But what I can do is tell you I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t know what she’d do?

Did he hear that right, she really doesn’t know?

Even now, even when she can see how badly she hurt him, when she knows the anguish she caused him; even now, if by some miracle of science fiction, some utterly impossible twist of fate, Donna was afforded the opportunity to travel back in time and stop herself from kissing Harvey, she doesn’t know whether or not she would do it.

Harvey smiles for an entirely different reason this time, a colder and more ironic smile, and hopes she sees the difference.

“Yeah, well,” he replies, “like I said, I’d like to be alone right now.”

Magnanimously, she takes her leave, turning with less of a flair than he’s come to expect of her and not nearly enough humility to make up the difference.

Harvey takes a deep breath and looks up at the night sky.

Mike is probably at home right now.

\---

Electing, for once, to be a little brazen, because he doesn’t think Mike will mind and the confirmation when he doesn’t will give his confidence a nice boost, Harvey knocks on Mike’s apartment door and opens it before he responds.

Hunched over his laptop on the coffee table, Mike glances up and smiles. “Harvey.”

Harvey steps in and closes the door behind him, pacing into the apartment proper and holding Mike’s gaze the entire way there.

“Mike,” he says, “the other night, when I told you that Donna kissed me—”

“Tell me she didn’t,” Mike interrupts, standing like a shot, his work instantly abandoned. Harvey shakes his head, reaching out for Mike’s hand.

“She didn’t do it again,” he confirms. “But when I told you she kissed me, I should have told you the whole story, and I didn’t.”

Mike laces their fingers together, and Harvey feels the tension in his grip.

“What happened?”

“It was years ago,” Harvey says, forcing the words past his lips, “and it was only one time, but Donna and I slept together.”

The befuddled look that comes over Mike’s face is actually pretty adorable, but it throws Harvey for such a loop that he takes a second to come up with anything else to say, and even then, it’s on the lackluster side:

“Please say something.”

Oh, well put, sir.

Mike shifts his hold on Harvey’s hand, pressing his thumb into Harvey’s palm.

“I know,” he says with only the smallest touch of trepidation. “Rachel told me, a couple years ago.”

Harvey frowns. Donna must have told Rachel; well, it makes sense, in a way. They’ve always been close.

“You never said anything.”

“Because I figure it’s your business,” Mike counters, “and it has nothing to do with me. Anyway, wasn’t that, like…fifteen years ago? When you were at the DA’s office, right?”

“Right after I left,” Harvey corrects, wondering how Mike can possibly be taking this so well and how much longer it’ll last before it blows up in Harvey’s face. “You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad?” Mike asks. “I didn’t even know you back then. You wanna hear about everyone I slept with in my days as a truant pothead?”

“Not really,” Harvey says, “but doesn’t it bother you that Donna and I still spend a lot of time together?”

“Yeah, a lot of time spent not having sex,” Mike points out. Dropping Harvey’s hand, he reaches up to frame his face, tugging him forward enough to make his point but fortunately not enough to hurt Harvey’s spine.

“Look,” he intones, “you and Donna have a long and very winding history together. There was a time when you thought you could be a great couple. You might’ve thought you were in love, you might’ve _been_ in love, I don’t know.”

Sliding his hands down, he clasps them behind Harvey’s neck and looks pointedly into his eyes. “But I also don’t _care,_ because you and I are together, and I love you, and I trust you, and if she thought, even though she knows you as well as she does, even though she knows everything about you that she does, even though she knows how important trust and honesty are to you in your relationships, if she _seriously_ thought the best way to finally figure out all of your weird, complicated, unresolved shit was to come up to you and kiss you, out of fucking nowhere, in the middle of the night, then that is _her_ problem. Not yours.”

Quite suddenly, Harvey is enormously insulted at his own lack of faith. That he would have the gall, that he would have the _temerity_ to think that Mike would be _angry_ with him over this whole mess, over Donna’s insistence on dredging up their history after all this time, making it out to be more than it is, more than it ever really was, is…

It’s just fucking stupid.

Reaching up to grab Mike’s face in his hands, Harvey drags him in for a fervent kiss, closing his eyes tight as he tries to immerse himself completely in the sensation of Mike moving with him, holding him close and giving exactly as good as he’s getting. The need to breathe forces them apart all too soon, but Harvey doesn’t bother to stop himself from getting just enough air back in his lungs to claim another before he lets Mike go.

Mike’s eyes are a little wet for some reason, and they sparkle when he smiles.

“You okay?” he asks, trailing his fingers through the hair at the nape of Harvey’s neck, and Harvey remembers for the thousandth time that he’s the luckiest guy on the whole damn planet.

“God dammit, Mike,” he sighs. “How did you do that?”

Mike laughs, wrapping his arms the rest of the way around Harvey’s shoulders to pull him into a hug.

“I love you so much,” he murmurs into Harvey’s ear. Harvey turns his head to press an awkward kiss to Mike’s temple.

“I love you, too.”

Mike holds him tighter.

“Mike,” Harvey says after awhile, setting his hand on Mike’s shoulder and looking him in the eye. “It’s getting kind of late; you think I could stay the night?”

Looking around for a clock, Mike remembers belatedly that he’s wearing a watch on his wrist and turns it up to check the time.

“It’s only ten,” he observes. Harvey shrugs, debating how much suaveness he should be aiming for before forcibly reminding himself that at the moment, it really, really doesn’t matter.

“You mind if I stay the night anyway?”

Mike looks over his shoulder toward the bedroom. “Well I wouldn’t, if you really want to,” he says, “but I’m pretty sure your bed is bigger. If we’re being practical.”

“You’ve never been practical a day in your life.”

Mike snickers and Harvey kisses him again, quickly, just because he can.

“Plus,” he goes on, “you know, if I’m ever going to move in with you, we might as well start getting used to the sleeping arrangements now. I mean. It only makes sense.”

Harvey leans forward to rest his forehead against Mike’s, blinking a few times when his eyes begin to cross.

“I think you’d better be careful saying things like that.”

“Why,” Mike teases, “you might start getting ideas?”

“You say that like I haven’t been waiting seven years for this.”

Harvey watches Mike soften instantly, the joking atmosphere dissipated as the full force of everything Harvey’s asking of him, everything Harvey’s willing to wait for, no matter how long it takes, hits him in the chest, maybe even for the first time. Smiling, he leans forward to meet Mike’s kiss, enamored with him all over again as he remembers that no matter what else is going on, what other shit gets in their way, whatever comes between them, or doesn’t, they’re strong enough to take it all on together.

Mike hums a quiet sigh when they part again.

“Okay,” he says. “Let me just get my toothbrush, and then we can go home.”

Harvey startles at the implication, faltering and sticking his hands in his pockets to try to hide the clumsy gesture.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Mike smirks and tilts his head.

“I’ll think about it.”

Watching Mike walk off down the hall, Harvey rocks back on his heels and smiles to himself.

These things have a way of working themselves out in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You can keep hiding out in Jessica’s shadow, or you get out of it and start being Harvey goddamn Specter.”  
> —Mike, “[Skin in the Game](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s07e01)” (s07e01)
> 
> For I think fairly obvious reasons, an enormous amount of dialogue has been lifted verbatim and nearly verbatim from “Hard Truths” (s07e11).
> 
> So, this fic was written out of my frustration with the episode’s entire Paula/Harvey/Donna situation. Specifically that Donna _knows_ that Harvey has issues trusting people, mainly because when he was 16, he caught his mother cheating on his father; she _knows_ fidelity is hugely important to him, and she knows that he trusts _her,_ and yet she _still_ thought it was appropriate to accost him and kiss him to sort out her own freaking UST issues.
> 
> Furthermore, Paula, as Harvey’s former therapist (which is a whole other issue that I have addressed in other fic), _also knows_ about his trust issues, and his mother issues, and yet her _immediate response_ to Harvey divulging that, and I quote, “Donna kissed [him],” is to accuse _him_ of kissing _Donna,_ and then bitch that he asked Paula to move in with him because she makes him forget about the feelings for Donna that Paula won’t stop insisting he has even though Harvey has told her _repeatedly_ that he does not. And then she gets all pissed off that he waited two days to tell her about the kiss instead of, I don’t know, trying to figure out _why_ he waited. Or just understanding it without the explanation, I mean, if you know his history, it’s not like it’s that complicated, and she keeps insisting she’s a licensed psychiatrist (although the more screen time she has, the less I’m convinced that that’s true).
> 
> So anyway, feel free to say hi on [tumblr](https://statusquoergo.tumblr.com)!


	2. [Interlude]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, [snjeguljica33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snjeguljica33/pseuds/snjeguljica33) did ask for it...

As is his habit, Harvey wakes in stages; first, he takes a moment to delight in the silkiness of his fifteen hundred thread count sheets, a perfect compliment to his soft cotton t-shirt and boxer shorts. Next, he tucks his face into the comforter cocooning his body, squeezing his eyes shut tight against the light of the rising sun; finally, he inches his hand toward the left side of the bed, waiting to see if he reaches something solid before he gets to the edge. It so happens that his arm stretches all the way out without hitting anything, but that’s fine. The mattress is still a little warm in the shape of Mike’s body; he won’t have been gone long.

Sure enough, the sound of shuffling footsteps rouses Harvey from his nest a few minutes later as Mike pads closer, already dressed for the day and with two mugs clutched in his hands, both full of coffee if he knows what’s good for him. Mike smiles as he hands over the larger of the two, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Morning,” he murmurs, raising his mug to his lips. Harvey smiles back, cradling his in his hands as the warmth seeps into his skin.

“Hey,” he murmurs back. “Sleep well?”

Setting his coffee down on the night table, Mike leans in for an easygoing kiss. “Very.” Harvey chases after him for another as he leans back, and Mike indulges him briefly before moving out of reach. “You?”

“Don’t I always when you’re around?”

“Don’t you try to guilt me into staying here.”

“Give me a little more credit than that.”

Mike scoffs, slipping his hand behind Harvey’s neck and pulling him forward for another kiss. “Maybe just a little.”

Harvey grins.

Mike picks his mug back up, peering at Harvey curiously as he takes another drink.

“Something wrong?”

“What?” Harvey looks around briefly, his smile falling away, as Mike lowers his gaze to the cup in Harvey’s hands.

“You haven’t inhaled your coffee yet.”

Oh. Yeah, that’s fair; Harvey is usually a proponent of the adage that a good day starts with a good pick-me-up, or however it’s usually phrased. Shaking his head, he takes a pointed sip.

“It’s nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”

Harvey sighs, turning the bottom of the mug on his palm.

“I’m still thinking about Donna.”

Setting his coffee on the night table, Mike nods slowly; he doesn’t quite get it, but he’s trying his best. He’s willing to listen.

“It’s something she said the other day,” Harvey elaborates, “the day I told you about her kissing me. She said it didn’t mean anything because she didn’t feel anything, that it was fine because whatever she’d been looking for wasn’t there, I just— I don’t know why, I can’t forget about it.” Eyeing Mike’s apprehension, he shakes his head, setting his coffee aside so as not to spill it. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, “I’ll get over it.”

“No, Harvey,” Mike protests, “if it’s really bothering you, I’m not saying you should ignore it. I think it was a big thing that happened and it makes sense that it’s still on your mind, and you guys haven’t really talked it out, have you?”

Thinking back to their exchange on the rooftop yesterday, Harvey rocks his head back and forth. “Not…exactly.”

“Well there you go,” Mike reasons, “no resolution.”

As though this situation can be tied up with a neat bow if they just sit down and explain themselves over tea and cake, or maybe whiskey and bourbon. Harvey smiles weakly and makes an abortive reach for his coffee mug again, the tail end of grogginess bantering persistently around his mind and getting a bit in his eyes.

“I don’t mean you have to fix everything,” Mike explains, retrieving Harvey’s mug and handing it to him. “I still think it was a shitty thing for her to do and it doesn’t sound like she’s really thought about why you might’ve reacted the way you did, so I’m not telling you just to get over it or anything. I’m not telling you to go forgive her and move on. But I do think you guys should sit down somewhere private where you can tell her what it did to you and give her time to process so she can stop being so goddamn defensive.”

Harvey takes a drink because Mike bothered to get it for him, but he sets the mug aside as quickly as he can to cradle Mike’s face in his hands and kiss him deeply. Mike reflexively chases after him as he pulls away, and Harvey doesn’t stop himself laughing when Mike nearly falls forward into his lap.

“This is what I get for trying to help you,” Mike mutters, righting himself. Harvey smirks.

“Pretty sure that one was on you, kid.”

Mike’s glare lasts all of five seconds before Harvey takes pity on him with one last gentle kiss, his soft smile mirroring Mike’s when they part.

“Alright,” he hums, “we’ve gotta get ready for work.”

Mike nods, smoothing down his shirtfront as he stands.

“Time to go be awesome.”

Harvey pushes the comforter aside with a grin.

“Aren’t you always?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a riff on the early-morning scenes from “[Home to Roost](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s07e06)” (s07e06) and “[Donna](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s07e10)” (s07e10) where Harvey and Paula chat about problems he’s having, largely revolving around his relationship with Donna, and Paula is super territorial and mildly patronizing.


	3. Bad Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter assumes familiarity with the episode “[Bad Man](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s07e12)” (s07e12), but the crucial stuff left out is that Oliver Grady is representing a food bank who’s suing their supplier for jacking up the price of the food packets, and the supplier (Hudson Mills, fronted by Tom Perkins) is a company represented by Specter Litt, so Oliver asks Mike to take the case so he can avoid “going around in circles with someone else.” When Mike gets the supplier to reduce their price by 70%, Oliver suddenly claims that he won’t accept a deal that doesn’t take the price back to market, which the food bank was paying before, and they go back and forth with some undisclosed findings and legal bullshit before Mike finally takes Oliver to school. Also Jessica needs two million dollars from Harvey and there’s some weird B-plot about preserving his dad’s legacy that comes out of fucking nowhere.

Harvey stares at Donna. Surely she’s just trying to take a shortcut back into his good graces, because surely Mike wouldn’t do something like that. Would he? No, he wouldn’t, he’s too smart, too, what’s the right phrase, too emotionally aware? Not quite, but too _something._

Of course, he’s not going to figure things out by just sitting here. Breezing past Donna without so much as a “Thanks,” or “Good night,” he stalks across the floor to Mike’s office, storming through the open door without bothering to announce himself.

“Harvey,” Mike says, glancing up from his desk. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Harvey narrows his eyes critically. “Did you convince Tom Perkins to take a haircut on his deal?”

“Yes,” Mike replies, “I did. Why, is that a problem?”

“I don’t have a problem with you doing it,” Harvey grits out, “I have a problem with you not disclosing that the opposing counsel is Oliver Grady.”

Thinking back to the last time he saw that lanky kid in court, handling an actual case of his own, Harvey doesn’t really think they’re going to have a problem winning by a landslide, but it’s the _principle_ of the thing that really gets to him. Harvey’s gone up against friends and former colleagues before, of course; at a certain point in their line of work, it becomes unavoidable, but if Oliver and Mike have anything like the mentor-protégée relationship Mike and Harvey used to, he isn’t sure Mike knows quite what he’s getting himself into.

“Harvey,” Mike says cautiously, “I’m trying to do us all a favor here.”

Harvey frowns. “You want to walk me through that?”

“Sure.” Mike taps the tip of his pen against the papers on his desk. “If Oliver sues us, it’s not good for the clinic, it’s not good for our client, and it’s sure as hell not good for us, but this way we land where we would have landed without all the trouble.”

And if Oliver is as irrationally idealistic as Mike was back then, there’s no way this is going to go as smoothly as Mike seems to be expecting.

“And what’s your plan if it doesn’t work out that way?” Harvey challenges. “If Perkins finds out you took this case because you and Oliver are friends?”

“I think Perkins will be glad to hear that I have a good relationship with opposing counsel,” Mike replies, “and I think Oliver is a reasonable guy who’ll be on board with a plan that has him coming out ahead.”

“Coming out _ahead?_ ” Harvey repeats. “He wants to get the price back down to cost, how is seventy percent him coming out ahead?”

“He said every little bit helps,” Mike defends. “I think this’ll work.”

God, Mike really _doesn’t_ remember how tenacious he was back then, fighting for the little guy against nigh impossible odds; how hard he worked to persuade Harvey over to his side, or go behind his back for the greater good. Harvey lowers his gaze to the floor and shakes his head.

“I really hope you know what you’re getting into,” he warns. Mike nods.

“I think I do.”

Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.

\---

The next few days and weeks pass in a haze of long phone calls, late nights, and road trips as Harvey struggles to find a way to help Jessica with her mysterious request and Mike does his best to get a leg up on the clinic; Harvey hears through Specter Litt’s extremely porous grapevine that Rachel’s offered Mike her assistance, which is a nice gesture, and Harvey suspects she’ll be able to keep him from going too far off the rails, which sets his mind somewhat at ease.

He and Mike haven’t spoken much recently, which he tells himself is purely because of all the work they’re doing and definitely has nothing to do with Mike’s handling of the Perkins case. Mike surely isn’t struggling with the fact that Oliver isn’t rolling over as easily as he expected, and he absolutely isn’t doing his best to prove to Harvey that he can handle a case without letting his personal relationship with opposing counsel get in the way.

This certainly isn’t going incredibly poorly and hurting everybody’s feelings.

Then Donna stops by to mention that Mike found a way to wipe the floor with Oliver, and Harvey gets an idea.

\---

“You can boil water, right?”

Oliver nods nervously, dawdling behind Harvey as he unlocks his apartment door. “Yeah,” he fumbles, “I uh, I got pretty good at living off coffee and ramen when I was in law school.”

Harvey nods and lets him in. “Great. Now we don’t have a lot of time, but I did most of the hard stuff last night, so all you’ve gotta do is turn on the stove and keep stirring. Make sure nothing burns, put in the pasta when the water boils, nothing to it. You got that?”

“I think I do,” Oliver says, looking around Harvey’s spacious apartment. “Thanks for setting this up, Mister Specter, I really appreciate it.”

Harvey hangs his coat in the closet and picks up his briefcase. “I admire a man who’s willing to admit to his mistakes.”

Stationing himself in front of the stove and picking up the wooden spoon laid out on the counter, Oliver smiles shyly. “Thank you.”

“Of course, that was a pretty big mistake you made,” Harvey reminds him. “Don’t do it again.”

Oliver shakes his head rapidly. “I won’t.”

He’d better not.

Harvey crosses his arms and surveys the scene he’s preparing to leave in his wake. “Mike should be here soon,” he says, “so keep the heat moderate, don’t spill anything, and I’ll be in my office if you run into any problems.”

“I won’t.”

“No,” Harvey agrees, “you won’t. I’ll be able to hear everything from back there, I’ll come back when you two are done talking. Don’t screw it up.”

“I won’t,” Oliver repeats. “Uh, thank you again.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” Harvey says, because this kid is clearly important to Mike, and Harvey would do anything to make Mike happy, but that doesn’t mean dinner is going to become a regular _thing._

Oliver nods profusely as Harvey makes his way to his home office, leaving the door open a crack and setting his briefcase down by the desk. The front door opens about ten minutes later and he listens to Mike’s footsteps down the hall.

“Something smells amazing,” Mike says, his voice growing clearer as he makes his way to the kitchen area.

“I made your favorite,” Oliver replies, which is quick enough thinking except that Harvey didn’t. “Linguine with pesto.”

It’s a spinach sauce, actually. Harvey drops his chin to his chest, permitting himself a private moment of melodrama as he sighs wearily.

“My favorite is penne vodka,” Mike corrects, “but the larger issue is, what have you done with Harvey?”

“He ran out to get some wine,” Oliver invents, which would be clever if not for the fact that there’s an entire glass-doored cabinet full of wine literally at his feet.

“You mean, he went out to give us some time to talk,” Mike says. Harvey picks up head back up and grins; Mike isn’t buying this for a second.

“He did,” Oliver says, “because I wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

Oliver pauses for a moment, and Harvey steps closer to the door as his voice drops a bit.

“You were right. If you had rolled over, it wouldn’t have helped me learn what I needed to.”

As if Mike would ever roll over for anyone. Maybe this kid doesn’t know him as well as they tell themselves he does.

“Oliver—”

“Let me finish,” Oliver interrupts. “No doubt, that loss stings, but today was the first time I felt like your equal, and I appreciate that more than you know.”

Harvey scoffs quietly; he isn’t Mike’s equal, not by a long shot. And what’s all this about the loss stinging, wasn’t Oliver fighting so hard for his underdog client because their mission is so important? Providing affordable food to poor families or whatever, wasn’t that what he was so up in arms about this whole time? Well, this might be an interesting development to revisit later; Oliver might not be quite so much the high-minded idealist he likes to pretend he is.

But that’s for another time. For now, Mike laughs quietly, and through the crack in the door, Harvey sees him prop his arm up on the wall with a smile. “I guess I’ll just keep treating you with respect and kicking the shit out of you.”

Oliver chuckles. “Bring it on, brother.”

Okay, that’s enough of that.

“So,” Harvey says, stepping out of the office, “you two finished making up yet?”

Mike grins sunnily at his appearance. “Yeah,” he says, “and I hope you’re here to take over, ‘cause I’m pretty sure the last thing Oliver cooked was SpaghettiOs.”

“Chef Boyardee, motherfucker,” Oliver cuts in, “and it was delicious.”

“If that’s true, I think I might have vastly overestimated your palate,” Harvey warns dryly as he recovers control of the stove, taking the spoon from Oliver’s lax grip.

Mike snorts a laugh as Oliver looks between them perplexedly.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mike assures Harvey. “He’ll adjust.”

“If you say so,” Harvey mutters. “Dinner in ten, Mike, you want to set the table?”

Mike nods. “Come on, Oliver, I’ll show you where he keeps the fine china.”

“Like hell you will.”

A moment later, having directed Oliver to the napkins and cutlery, Mike steps to Harvey’s side and opens the dishware cabinet above the stove for some decidedly non-china plates and salad bowls.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

Harvey nods and checks on the linguine.

It’s nice when things work out in the end.

\---

All in all, the dinner went pretty well, Harvey thinks; he isn’t sure quite what he expected beyond Mike and Oliver making amends for whatever backstabbing fuckup Oliver tried to pull, but the conversation ended up flowing along more smoothly than he’d anticipated, and despite Mike’s claim that he’ll start thinking of Oliver as an equal, the kid seems to know his place. The general opulence of Harvey’s home probably didn’t hurt, but he’s not complaining.

“Did I thank you for setting this up?” Mike asks as he climbs into bed, immediately rolling over to face Harvey and propping his head up on his hand.

“You did,” Harvey replies, putting a bookmark into the copy of _War and Peace_ that he’s been reading for about two years now as Mike smiles.

“Well, thank you,” he repeats. “I know Oliver isn’t your favorite person, but I really appreciate you helping me talk things out with him.”

“It never hurts to be in good standing with the opposition,” Harvey points out. Mike ducks his head down to hide a smile as he leans into Harvey’s side, laying his free arm across his chest.

“You’re such a dick,” he murmurs. “I’m trying to give you a compliment.”

Laying his book down on his stomach, Harvey wraps his arm around Mike’s shoulder and pull him closer to press a kiss into his hair. “I appreciate it. I’m glad you patched things up.”

“Hm.”

After a moment, Harvey picks his book back up and continues reading as Mike remains nestled against him, staring off into space. He’s just starting to get properly drowsy, the words beginning to run together and go out of focus, when Mike leans back to rest on his elbow again.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

Harvey sets his book on the night table. “Yes.”

“We don’t have to go to work.”

“You just noticed?”

“But we’d have plenty of time to pack up all my shit and bring it over here.”

Doing his best to maintain a neutral expression despite the sudden rush of warmth in his chest and the butterflies flailing about in his stomach, Harvey nods his agreement. “I guess we would.”

Mike drops his arm and turns onto his back. “Thanks for giving me time to think about it,” he says. “Sorry it took so long.”

Harvey slides down beneath the covers until his head is resting on his pillow. “At least I know you’re sure about it.”

“So romantic, Harvey, I’m shocked.”

Turning onto his side, Harvey smiles, reaching out to take Mike’s hand and thread their fingers together.

“Thank you, Mike.”

Mike brings their clasped hands up to his lips.

“I love you.”

Harvey smirks lazily. “I know.”

Rolling his eyes as dramatically as he possibly can, Mike turns to face away from Harvey, dragging his arm with him as he goes and holding their hands to his chest like some kind of makeshift stuffed animal. Harvey edges closer to relieve some of the tension in his triceps, closing his eyes as he decides that this might be a nice to way fall asleep for the rest of his life.

It’s something to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A considerable amount of dialogue is lifted verbatim and near-verbatim from “Bad Man” (s07e12).
> 
> Harvey’s canonical argument against Mike convincing Tom Perkins “to take a haircut on his deal” is that Perkins might sue Specter Litt for malpractice when he finds out that Oliver is Mike’s “best friend” (because that’s not emotional insecurity or anything), which is incredibly stupid; a lot of lawyers in the same specialty really do know each other, especially if they work in the same city, and friendships between them can actually help cases run more smoothly because they’re familiar with one another’s thought processes and not at each other’s throats from the get.
> 
> And yes, I anguished for awhile about adding some kind of sexual innuendo after the “Mike doesn’t roll over for anyone” line, but it didn’t fit into the syntactical flow, so you have my blessing to supply your own.
> 
> Tolstoy, L. (2008). _War and Peace_. (R. Pevear  & L. Volokhonsky, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Classics. (Original work published 1867)


	4. Inevitable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because _Suits_ is canonically starting to double down on the Darvey implications at this point, this chapter takes a lot more liberties than the previous ones in diverging from the plot upon which it’s based. To wit, the situation with Stu shapes up quite differently (in part due to insights I received by reading some actual stock traders’ responses to that sub-plot), and rather than using the kiss as a gateway to getting Donna and Harvey together, I’m still holding it against her that they haven’t talked out what a problem it was that she did it in the first place. Speaking of holding things against people, it might be clear from some of my other works that I’m not Lily’s biggest fan, so she doesn’t come off quite as well here as she does in canon, either.

Unsurprisingly, it takes more than a single Saturday to migrate all of Mike’s belongings to Harvey’s condo; in fact, given the spontaneity of the decision, Saturday isn’t spent moving anything at all, merely categorizing the lot as things Mike can’t or won’t do without, things he doesn’t want, and things he does that Harvey objects to, the merit of which they have to debate like the civilized adults they are. (Only the panda painting devolves into an actual argument, which Mike claims he won and Harvey maintains he ceded willingly.) The move itself is, by some miracle of stubbornness, dedication, and heavily tipped removalists, confined to Sunday, leaving both of them mentally, physically, _and_ emotionally drained, but also so desperate to get out of the apartment that the coming workday feels like a blessing.

The first to wake, as he is more often than not, Harvey sneaks out of bed to start the coffeemaker. Whether it’s the smell that rouses him or not, Mike isn’t too far behind, though Harvey is pleased to note that he bothered to dress for the day before seeking his breakfast.

“Morning,” Harvey greets as Mike shuffles over to him and sags against his back. “Want a cup?”

“I love you,” Mike mutters, still not bothering to stand under his own power. Harvey smirks.

“You talking to me or the coffee?”

“Can’t it be both?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been told I’m the jealous type.”

Drawing his shoulder blades back in a brief stretch, Mike leans in to kiss Harvey on the cheek, reaching around him to claim a mug in the process. “I could never replace you.”

Harvey smiles.

Stepping away from the pot as Mike goes to serve himself, Harvey’s gaze catches on the living room, on the boxes piled in the corner, the miscellanea already making its way into the cabinets and the books crammed onto the shelves. Considering the chaotic madness of the past two days, it’s amazing how smoothly everything seems to have fit together now that it’s here; their aesthetics aren’t a perfect match, of course, and Harvey expects that some of the new additions will bring a certain inescapable Mike-ness to the condo that wasn’t there before, but surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), the coming change doesn’t feel like an intrusion so much as…growth, a fitting in of some piece that the condo has done fine without since Harvey’s lived there but will be all the better for once it’s arrived.

“Hell of a weekend,” Harvey posits, raising his coffee to his lips.

“You mean you weren’t having the time of your life?” Mike gasps, feigning horror as he sheds his exhaustion with truly impressive speed.

Harvey smirks into his mug. “What do you say we go out for dinner tonight?”

“You never want to see this place again either, huh?”

“I mean to treat ourselves a little,” Harvey says. “And maybe ignore the fact that we still have all those boxes to unpack.”

Mike turns to look over his shoulder, his skeptical expression sliding quickly into trepidation as he sees just how much work is still waiting for them.

“Okay,” he agrees, turning back. “Yeah, that’ll be nice.”

Harvey tips his mug in Mike’s direction with a little nod. “How’s eight o’clock sound?”

Mike grins.

“Sounds great.”

\---

Well, this is a hell of a way to start off a Monday morning, Harvey thinks as he finishes penning a memo to himself outlining Teddy Doyle’s situation. Not that it’s surprising, exactly, that Adidas would sell off Teddy’s old company to the highest bidder at the drop of a hat, but he somehow imagined the universe doing him a favor after the hellish weekend he and Mike have just suffered, maybe handing him a softball to get his groove back.

Of course, there’s always something to be said for chucking himself right into the deep end without a life preserver.

“Hey,” he says, ambling into Mike’s office casually, as if to ask nothing more complex than a witness signature on a routine merger agreement. “Whatever you’re working on, what’s the timeline?”

“Uh,” Mike drawls, setting his pen aside, “it’s not urgent, why?”

Harvey sticks his hands in his pockets. “Teddy Doyle just came to see me.”

“Didn’t he retire?”

“He did,” Harvey confirms, “but a situation’s come up, and he asked for my help.”

Mike already looks suspicious. “What kind of situation?”

“The ‘Kurt Baxter is buying his old company and laying off the whole factory’ kind.”

Mike tilts his head back a little, the way he does when he’s detected the concealed meaning of one of Harvey’s requests but knows he’s going to go along with it anyway. “I take it there’s no way we can stop him from going through with it.”

“Just like there was no way for you to sue your own client in a class action,” Harvey says rhetorically, “or get into the New York State Bar after going to prison for practicing law without a license.”

“That’s me,” Mike preens, “leaping tall buildings in a single bound.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

Setting his elbows down on his desk, Mike presses his fingers together in front of his face. “Harvey,” he ventures, “why doesn’t Teddy just buy his company back from this bastard and call it a day?”

“Because nothing in our lives is ever that easy,” Harvey says. Mike arches his eyebrows, and Harvey takes a seat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Professionally speaking. No, Teddy sold it for two hundred, Baxter wants five hundred, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have three hundred million dollars lying around to throw his way.”

Mike parts his hands courteously. “But that’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“Baxter doesn’t care where he makes his money from,” Mike explains. “He just cares that he gets it.”

Harvey nods, having arrived at a similar conclusion. “As long as the factory is making a revenue, the workers might be safe.”

“Truth, justice, and the American way.”

“You know I’m not just gonna let you keep calling yourself Superman and get away with it, right?”

“But you make such a dashing Lois Lane.”

Like he’s going to let that one pass. Standing abruptly, Harvey presses his hands down on Mike’s desk, towering over him, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward until their faces are only a few inches apart.

“ _I’m Batman._ ”

Immediately, Mike bursts out laughing, and the remainder of the illusion is shattered when Harvey grins, his stiff posture relaxing as he steps back to stand up straight.

“Robin would be appalled,” Mike notes as he regains control of himself, picking his pen back up and tapping it against a stack of papers in front of him. Harvey shakes his head.

“Just let me know when you come up with something.”

Mike tosses a two-fingered salute.

“On it.”

\---

Not fifteen minutes later, Mike marches into Harvey’s office to hand over a deal with Teddy’s former suppliers, lowering Baxter’s costs by thirty percent in exchange for a five-year contract, and Harvey smiles proudly as he escorts Mike downstairs to meet Ray at the car. Of course, because nothing in their lives is ever easy, the meeting with Baxter goes surprisingly poorly; it doesn’t dim his pride, but it does dim his enthusiasm when Baxter rejects the deal out of hand, his mood profoundly soured at the realization that their adversary isn’t a savvy businessman so much as a virulent asshole.

“Harvey,” Mike presses as they walk down the hall back to Harvey’s office, “Harvey, listen to me, we’re out of options. That was the last-ditch effort, that was the shot at the buzzer; Teddy walked away from this, there’s nothing else we can do.”

“He wouldn’t have if he’d known all those workers were going to be laid off,” Harvey insists.

“Maybe not,” Mike admits, “but you know as well as I do that that sort of thing is always a danger when big companies like this are sold, he had to know it was a risk.”

Harvey stalks around his desk, standing with his back to the window. “So we’re supposed to just abandon it?”

Mike frowns. “Harvey, what is going on with you?”

“You two want to tell me what’s going on?”

Harvey grits his teeth as Donna sweeps into the room. Whether she’s still trying to make amends with him, or she’s trying to assert her authority as COO somehow, or she just thinks she can butt in on any loud conversation she happens to catch wind of, he isn’t sure, but at the moment, she’s pretty low on the list of people he’d like to be talking with.

“Donna,” he begins, “I don’t want—”

“Teddy caught me up,” she cuts him off, “and I’m here to find out just how deep of a hole you’re digging us into.”

“There isn’t any hole to dig us into,” Mike says, looking furtively between her and Harvey, “seeing as how Teddy doesn’t have enough money to match the Chinese buyers.”

Donna purses her lips, and Harvey knows this situation is about to start spiraling downward, he _knows_ it is, but for some reason, he can’t seem to gather his words in time to stop it.

“And what if the company happened to fall back into his price range?”

Mike narrows his eyes at her. “You want us to short the stock?”

“We need Stu Buzzini to short the stock,” she corrects. “I can get him to do it.”

Does Donna think that if she proves what a femme fatale she is, Harvey will forgive her, no holds barred? What the hell is going on around here, is everyone playing in some kind of Desperate Final Gambit Olympics that Harvey didn’t know about?

“That’s illegal,” Mike points out. “Donna, can you just—give us a minute, Harvey and I need to talk.”

Looking critically between the two of them, she nods slowly; Harvey wonders what it is she thinks she’s understanding.

“Fine,” she says. “But just think about it.”

She walks out of the room, back down the hall, and Mike turns to Harvey with an acerbic expression on his face.

“You know she’s going to talk to Stu right now.”

Harvey waves him off. “He won’t short the stock just because she tells him to,” he dismisses. “He’s not a short seller, he’s been in the business too long to fall for something like that.”

“Yeah…”

Harvey narrows his eyes. “But?”

“‘But,’” Mike mimics, “why is this getting to you so much? Is it just because of the workers getting laid off, because to be honest with you, that sounds more like something you’d yell at me for doing.”

“I would not.”

“Sure, not _now,_ ” Mike agrees, “because now I know better than to think I can save the whole goddamn world by myself. Are you really just doing all this because Teddy’s your friend? Because I’ve seen you before when your friends come to you to pull them out of the fires they’ve thrown themselves into, and you’ve never been shy about telling them there’s nothing you can do when you have to.” His face pinches worriedly as Mike takes a hurried step forward. “Does he have something on you, do you owe him for something?”

If only this was all so easy to explain. Harvey sinks back into his chair, allowing himself just enough of a slouch to call his professionalism into question but not so much as to risk permanent damage.

“No,” he says. “That’s not the whole reason.”

“Wait,” Mike says, pulling out one of the chairs opposite Harvey to sit as well, “so he _does_ have something on you?”

Harvey shakes his head. “I mean I’m not _just_ doing this because we’re friends.”

Mike raises his hands and jostles his shoulders, a goading little “so what is it then,” and Harvey sits upright in his chair, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his desk.

“It’s not just because of everything with Donna,” he says, because that might be part of it, that’s probably part of it, but it can’t be everything. Even after all this time, their many years of companionship, of friendship, she can’t possibly have so much power over him. “And it’s not about you.”

“Me?” Mike interrupts. “Did I do something?”

“No, no, I just want to clear that up before I give you the wrong idea,” Harvey assures him. “But—after that whole mess with Oliver, you seemed so happy to have reconciled with him, and Donna and I are still so up in the air, and I had to throw Jessica under the bus and run her over, everything just seems…out of control.” He closes his eyes, pinching his temples between his thumb and middle finger. “My friend came to me asking for help, and after you put that deal together, it seemed so simple, and now that it’s not, I just, I can’t let it go.”

So there it is, then.

Harvey glances up when Mike sighs.

“I get it,” he murmurs. “It’s a lot.”

Harvey scoffs.

“It is,” Mike presses, “and he’s your friend, he’s important to you. I’m not saying I have a magical cure-all to give you, or a way to fix Teddy’s problem, and I’m definitely not saying we’re going to win this case no matter what, but…if getting this win means this much to you, I mean, we can at least give it a shot.”

“Mike, you don’t have to do that. This is a goddamn suicide mission.”

Mike grins. “So maybe I feel like getting back in touch with my roots.”

Harvey smiles back weakly, hoping Mike understands that he feels a lot happier than he probably looks. Pressing his hand down on top of the desk, Mike makes to stand, probably to go back to his own office, maybe even to give some further consideration to this whole mess, when the phone rings; he arches his eyebrows querulously and Harvey holds up his hand to give him pause.

“Hello.”

“Am I interrupting?”

Harvey glances down at the call display. 617 area code; Boston, Massachusetts. So his ears _aren’t_ deceiving him.

“No,” he says cautiously as Mike slowly lowers himself back to his seat. “I just got out of a meeting.”

“Well,” Lily says over the sound of a glass being set down on a table or something, “I’m just getting ready to come down there.”

Harvey blanches. “You’re coming to the city?”

“Yeah,” she says brightly, “just for tonight. I know it’s last-minute, but I was hoping you might be available for dinner.”

“Dinner?” he repeats. _My mom,_ he mouths to Mike, pointing at the phone as Mike grips his chair’s armrests and tenses the line of his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Lily teases, “you know, the meal people usually eat in the evening?”

“I know what dinner is,” Harvey says, and she laughs.

“Would you like to have some?”

He looks over at Mike, who seems to have gotten the gist of the conversation but doesn’t project much of a perspective beyond “mild concern.”

“Of course,” Harvey hedges, “it’s just that I have plans tonight with the person I’m seeing, and we just had a pretty hectic weekend, and—”

“Say no more, Harvey,” Lily cuts him off with a smile in her voice. “Just tell me her name in case I talk to Marcus. It’ll be fun to have the scoop on him.”

Harvey scowls at the implication that his family is ganging up on him, sharply reminded of the years spent concealing his mother’s affair, of nobody telling him about the resurgence of Marcus’s cancer a few years ago.

“His name is Mike,” he says, mainly because he knows it’s the last thing she expects. If she has any sense of decorum at all, she’ll leave this conversation to Harvey and Marcus to have amongst themselves; of course, that’s far from a given, but he can hope.

Sure enough, the next sound out of her mouth isn’t another taunt but a stuttered “Uh” sound. Harvey smirks at Mike, and Mike lets his shoulders relax somewhat.

“I guess I’ll just have to wait until the next time I’m in the city to see you,” she says, finally recovering some composure, and yeah, there’s that passive-aggressive bullshit he’s used to. Harvey rolls his eyes, and Mike tilts his head.

“Hang on,” Harvey says, lowering the receiver and putting his hand over the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, “I didn’t really think that one through; if I don’t see her after I just told her about you, she’s never going to let me live it down.”

Mike frowns thoughtfully. “Would it be better or worse if the three of us went out to dinner together?”

Should’ve seen that one coming.

“Are you serious?” Harvey intones. “I don’t want to do that to you. And we were supposed to have this evening just for ourselves, this isn’t…”

“Fair?” Mike guesses.

“I think I was going to say ‘nearly as good.’”

Mike smirks. “Thanks, Harvey, but you know, there’ll be other evenings. We can go out to a nice dinner whenever we want. And besides,” he leans forward until his chest is pressed to the edge of the desk and lowers his voice a few degrees, “this was supposed to be us celebrating moving in together? I don’t know, feels kind of…unimaginative.”

“Mike,” Harvey scolds, “this is my mother on the phone.”

“Yeah, I don’t think she’d be allowed to come along on this one.”

Biting his lip to smother a laughing grin, Harvey flicks Mike on the forehead and raises the phone back to his ear as Mike giggles into his hand.

“We were wondering if you wanted to join us for dinner,” he proposes.

“Harvey, I’d love to,” she declares, and he rests his chin in his palm dispassionately. “Just tell me where and when.”

\---

The restaurant is lovely, elegant and expensive and not remotely the one where he and Mike had planned to go just the two of them. It’s no surprise that they arrive before Lily, given that the place is barely a mile from Specter Litt, and Ray parks practically right in front of the door; she takes it in stride, though, or puts up every appearance of doing so, hugging Harvey carefully and taking Mike’s offered handshake without a moment’s hesitation.

The waitstaff, accustomed to patrons eager to finish their meals and depart for the theater, is attentive nearly to the point of hovering, and it isn’t until the appetizers have been ordered and the wine poured that a moment of silence settles over the table. Lily chooses to break it by clearing her throat, and Harvey turns to her expectantly.

“So Mike,” she says, pressing her hands down into her lap and smiling at him. “How did you meet my son, how long have the two of you been…together?”

Mike glances at Harvey out of the corner of his eye. “We work together at the firm,” he says evasively, “we’ve been going out for about three months.”

“Harvey,” she admonishes, rapping lightly on his forearm, “three months? This sounds serious! I didn’t even know you were seeing someone!”

As though they’ve become pen pals since that fateful trip to Boston last year. Harvey smiles tightly.

“Well, I am,” he acknowledges. Lily laughs, and Mike just looks uncomfortable.

“Mike,” she says then, turning back to him, “you’re a lawyer too?”

“He’s the best junior partner we’ve got,” Harvey says. Mike smiles awkwardly.

“Yes, I’m a lawyer,” he replies to Lily, keeping half his attention on Harvey as he goes on: “I actually got my start at Pearson Hardman, as an associate.”

Harvey nods subtly, and Mike’s smile eases somewhat.

“Oh really?” Lily says. Harvey wonders if she knows enough about the typical lifespan of a lawyer to have any sense of how long he and Mike must have been colleagues; her bland smile says no, but then, she’s always had a knack for covering up her emotions.

“You must have a pretty quick mind, to keep up with my son here,” she goes on, and Harvey has to hand it to her, she’s making an effort. “He does what he wants, this one.”

“I’ve noticed,” Mike comments. “He’s gotten me out of a few pinches that way.”

Harvey nearly chokes on his wine, barely managing to set the glass back down on the table before he drops it in his lap, and Mike reaches over to rub his back. Lily looks between them a bit vacantly, but Harvey doesn’t much feel like explaining the more sordid details of their origin story, as it were.

“Listen, Mike,” Lily says then, setting her hand on the table near enough to Mike’s that Harvey is sure she’s resisting the urge to grab it, “I want to thank you for letting me intrude on your evening. I so rarely get these opportunities to see my son, and I’m so glad I got a chance to meet you.”

“Well,” Mike says as their appetizers arrive, “I’m glad I got to meet you too, but I can’t take all the credit.”

“Oh, actually I was talking about when Harvey came out to Boston,” she clarifies, “and he and I mended our fences. He said he did it because someone special in his life encouraged him, that must’ve been you.”

Mike winces impulsively, and Harvey reaches under the table to take his hand for a reassuring second. Lily’s smile dims the longer the silence stretches, and Harvey sort of wants to clear things up, but really, that’s too much to get into right now.

“It was someone else,” he says tartly, clearing his throat. “At the time, I may have given you the wrong impression about her. The uh, ‘someone special.’”

Lily pastes a smile back on her face as Mike swirls a spoon through his sweet pea soup.

The silence stretches well beyond the point of unpleasantness before Lily takes a breath and sighs loudly.

“So Mike, has Harvey ever told you any stories from when he was growing up?”

Harvey and Mike exchange a mildly perturbed look, silently agreeing not to follow up on that obvious opening.

“Not many,” Mike admits as Lily’s smile becomes much more genuine.

“Well,” she begins, “when Harvey was six, his father and I were throwing a dinner party.”

Mike smiles and nods and takes another spoonful of soup.

\---

As soon as they return home from the restaurant, Mike heads into the living room and opens the topmost box in a stack of them by the wall, removing a handful of paperbacks and a framed photograph of his grandmother. Standing on the opposite side of the room, by the kitchen, Harvey watches fondly as he crams the books onto the nearest case and positions the photograph on a decorative side table with a statue on it that Harvey isn’t terribly attached to; as soon as the photo’s placed, Mike seems to lose his momentum, collapsing onto the sofa, and Harvey sheds his jacket as he goes to join him.

“Thank you for coming to dinner,” he says as Mike fidgets around until his feet are kicked up into Harvey’s lap.

“Of course,” Mike says, nestling into the pillows at his back. “You okay?”

Is he? Harvey tilts his head. “Yeah,” he decides. “I guess I’m glad she’s still making the effort, I just… It feels like we’re still at different places with all of it.”

Mike nods with a contemplative hum. “Time doesn’t heal all wounds?”

“No,” Harvey agrees, “but I think it’s getting better.”

Mike leans over to reach for Harvey’s hand, rubbing his thumb across the backs of his knuckles. “Good.”

Harvey settles himself back against the cushions and rests his hand on Mike’s ankles.

Good.

Idly, he begins to untie Mike’s shoelaces.

“I have to talk to Donna.”

Mike laces their fingers together and sinks back into the pillows. “You said Stu wouldn’t follow her suggestion.”

“He won’t,” Harvey dismisses, sliding Mike’s shoe off his foot and tossing it to the floor, “but the fact that she thought she should go down there and try to get him to do it, the fact that she thought she could fix Teddy’s problem… I don’t know why she keeps trying to leverage herself into positions she’s not qualified for, but it has to stop before it gets us in trouble.”

“Maybe she’s just trying to prove herself to you,” Mike posits.

“By taking on jobs she doesn’t know anything about?” Harvey shakes his head. “She can’t get her way all the time by listening in on a few conversations and then fast-talking people who know better than she does. This is getting dangerous, it’s only a matter of time before she tries to pull this on the wrong guy.”

Mike tightens his grip on Harvey’s hand for a moment, and Harvey sighs.

“I have to talk to her.”

“Mm,” Mike murmurs. “And we’ve gotta figure out what we’re going to do about Baxter.”

Harvey scoffs. “Suddenly that seems like the least of our troubles.”

“I know, right?”

Harvey finishes removing Mike’s other shoe, pressing his fingers to the arch of his foot. “Let’s figure it out tomorrow.”

Dropping Harvey’s hand, Mike heaves himself up off the cushions and crawls forward to press a tender kiss to his lips. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Hm,” Harvey murmurs as Mike moves away, “I hate to break it to you, but I’m not sure I’ve got it in me to do much celebrating tonight.”

Mike shakes his head. “Honestly, right now I kind of just want to lie down next to you.”

Harvey smiles languidly. “Sounds like a plan.”

As he follows Mike, retrieving his shoes and padding down the hall to the bedroom, Harvey decides to put the entirety of the day into the back of his mind, locked up until tomorrow. Everything will work out, in time.

Meanwhile, it feels like it’s going to be a very good night.

\---

Harvey loves his job. He does. He really, really does. Repeating the litany over and over as he tries not to bash his head through a wall, Harvey glares down at papers spread across his desk, the most recent iteration of their offer to Baxter, shot down with the news that Baxter is no longer in the mood to accept any offer less than twenty-five percent more than the Chinese buyers are willing to pay. He wonders if this is at all how Mike felt when Oliver tried to pull the rug out from under him on that damn Hudson Mills deal, indulging in a moment of commiseration before he chucks the file in the recycling bin and sets about thinking of something better.

Of course that’s the moment Donna chooses to confront him with her latest grievance.

“Donna,” he tries not to groan as she storms into his office, “whatever it is, can it wait? I need—”

“No, it can’t wait, Harvey,” she bites out, “because Stu Buzzini just offered me a job.”

Harvey frowns. “He what?”

“You know what,” Donna snaps. “You were the one who asked him to make that offer in the first place, weren’t you?”

“What?”

Come to think of it, that would’ve resolved a lot of problems, and potential problems, but in the back of his mind, Harvey understands why she’s so furious. Mike is right, he needs to meet this issue head on rather than keep pushing it aside, and sending Donna off to work in the trades department would be nothing if not the ultimate brushoff.

“You’re trying to avoid me,” she accuses, “you’re trying to kick me out of this office for what happened. How many times do I have to apologize, Harvey, before you understand that I’m sorry for what happened?”

“I need to know you’re sorry that you did it,” he retorts, standing swiftly. “Donna, we keep going around in circles with this and you keep—not understanding what you did to me, not understanding how deeply you broke my trust, and what that means to me!”

Donna frowns deeply. “You think I don’t trust you?”

What?

“No! I—” Harvey pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment to collect himself.

“Look, Donna,” he begins, doing his best to keep his voice level. “I get that you’re confused. I know you were feeling vulnerable. I know you made a mistake. I know you think it was ‘just a kiss.’ But you were confused about something that’s not just about you, okay, it was about you and me both, about our relationship, together, and you just decided that the best way to figure out what you were feeling was to kiss me without my permission, without any warning.” He looks imploringly into her dark eyes, wondering if anything he’s saying is reaching her at all. “This isn’t a goddamn Danielle Steel novel, this is real life, and it might not’ve seemed like a big deal to you, but it was to me.”

Donna tucks her lips into her mouth, biting down as she takes a sharp breath in through her nose.

“I thought we were past that.”

“Well, apparently not,” Harvey retorts a little sharply. “Because you keep treating me like I’m the one being unreasonable for not letting you go off and do whatever you want, and when I think about it, that kiss was when it all started to go downhill for us.”

“Then why didn’t you come to me and explain the situation?” she asks lowly. “Or even have the balls just to fire me?”

“I don’t want to fire you over this,” he says. “I really don’t. You told me it wouldn’t happen again, and I’d like to believe you, but you’re not making it easy.”

“Well, I don’t want to go work with Stu,” she says. “I want to stay here in the position that I fought to get and that I love and that I know I deserve.”

The position she deserves? Harvey flashes back to her badgering him into making her a partner and then pulling a one-eighty the moment he capitulated to promoting her to Chief Operating Officer, insisting that it was what she’d been after all along and threatening to leave if she didn’t retain partner-level status at the negotiating table.

There’ll be time enough to deal with that later, once all this bullshit is cleared up and he can see where the dust has settled.

“No one’s stopping you from turning him down,” he points out. “I’m certainly not. But Donna, if you’re going to hold onto the position you have, you need to stop pretending you’re a lawyer, because you know what, you’re not. I know you want to think you and I are equals here, but I’m your boss, and if I tell you to do something, or not to do something, you’re free to tell me you disagree, but sometimes you just have to accept that I know what I’m talking about.”

Taking a step back, she shakes her head slowly, keeping her eyes locked with his.

“Harvey,” she breathes. “Are you saying _you_ don’t trust _me?_ ”

Good lord, is she doing all this on purpose?

“You know what,” he says coolly, “right now, maybe I don’t. I’m trying to be reasonable here, but if you don’t want to hear it, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“How about that you’re not going to hold one mistake against me?” she proposes. “One mistake in sixteen years together, Harvey, how about that?”

Her first sexual harassment, maybe, but hardly her first mistake. Harvey clenches his fist, pressing it down on the tattered remnants of their deal with Baxter, and drops his head.

“Donna, do me a favor.” She folds her arms across her chest, and he tries to ignore her standoffishness as he carries on: “Go back to your office, get back to work, and just try to think about what I said. I’m not firing you, I’m not forcing you to accept Stu’s offer, I just… I want you to try to think about things from my perspective.” He looks up, meeting her gaze again. “Okay?”

Donna’s eyes narrow, glistening slightly; Harvey wonders if the tears are borne more of anger or of hurt, but he can see equal arguments both ways and has no idea what’s running through her mind at the moment.

“Okay,” she says, with only the slightest tremor. “Okay, Harvey.”

He hopes she can figure it out.

Then the door swings shut, and Harvey sits heavily in his chair. Promoting from within might be common corporate practice, but it sure can be dangerous.

Wait a second…

The lightbulb going off above Harvey’s head nearly blinds him, but he tears through the files on his desk until he finds a folder tagged “Finances,” flipping through the pages until he finds the one he needs tucked inconspicuously in the middle. Picking up his receiver, he dials Mike’s extension, skimming the document in his hand, just to be sure.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Do you think we could still get that deal from Teddy’s suppliers?”

Mike makes a hesitant noise. “Yeah, why?”

Harvey grins. “How much capital do you think he’d be able to raise if he offered his employees equity partnership?”

Maybe some good is going to come out of this mess after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A considerable amount of dialogue is heavily adapted from “[Inevitable](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s07e13)” (s07e13).
> 
> It’s actually not illegal for felons to become lawyers in New York State, which is why I emphasized that the crime Mike went to prison for was impersonating a lawyer, because that would make it much more difficult to get into the Bar.
> 
> Harvey, Mike, and Lily have dinner at [DB Bistro Moderne](https://www.dbbistro.com/nyc/), which is an expensive French bistro at 55 West 44th Street (Specter Litt is at 53rd and Lexington, a little less than a mile northeast).
> 
> If you’re at all interested in my rant about Paula’s behavior in this episode, it’s on my tumblr [here](http://statusquoergo.tumblr.com/post/172993690264/in-picking-over-the-script-of-inevitable-to).


	5. Tiny Violin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because the Judge Rawls plot in “Pulling the Goalie” (s07e14) is incredibly stupid and involves Harvey acting wildly out of character (and doing some seriously illegal shit), I’m skipping the episode entirely. Furthermore, I’ve simplified the plot of this episode (“Tiny Violin”) considerably, since I don’t need to rationalize Wendell Pierce (Robert Zane) suddenly getting more of a screen presence, nor do I need to fill forty-two minutes of air time. I’ve also cut the subplot where Eastside Legal Clinic runs out of money, because at the end of “Character and Fitness” (s06e16), one of Mike’s conditions for returning to PSL is literally that Harvey has to make sure the clinic will be funded for two years.

Harvey isn’t typically in the business of speaking for his friends and loved ones, but he’s pretty sure he and Mike are in agreement that moving in together was one of the best decisions they could’ve made. On the balance, their lives don’t actually change very much; even before the technical cohabitation, they spent nearly every night together, whether at Mike’s place or at Harvey’s, but aside from the convenience factor, there’s a certain comfort that comes from making it official, a solace in always having someone to come home to without needing to make previous arrangements or risk springing a surprise visit. Changing the home address in Mike’s personnel file gives him a giddy little thrill that takes him by surprise and makes everything feel just a little more permanent.

With everything at the firm suddenly turned upside down, it’s nice to have that sort of stability at home.

“Harvey.”

Harvey glances up from the copy of the firm’s new lease that Donna dropped off on his desk the previous night, a well-intentioned effort to get back into his good graces that he hasn’t yet decided how to respond to. That’ll have to wait, though, because Mike has his “crisis of conscience” face on, and that can only mean one thing.

“What’s wrong?” Harvey asks carefully, and Mike presses his lips together in a narrow line.

“The clinic’s in trouble.”

Of course it is.

Harvey sets his hands on his chair’s armrests. “Let me guess,” he says, leaning away from his desk. “You want me to drive a dump truck full of money up to their door to help save some decrepit old apartment complex from being paved over into a mini mall.”

Mike smiles darkly. “Not exactly.” Closing the door behind him, he walks up to Harvey’s desk. “They’ve got a class action going against a battery company that gave a bunch of kids lead poisoning.”

Harvey scoffs. “Heartbreaking, but that clinic don’t have the resources for a class action.”

“That’s what I told Nathan,” Mike assures him. “But this has been going on for almost a year now, and…these kids are basically being murdered so some battery company can cut a few corners, I mean how can I not help them out?”

“You can march right into Nathan’s office and say, ‘I’d love to help you, but I have an actual job I need to do and I can’t come running every time you get yourself in over your head.’”

Mike’s shoulders draw back as he sighs tersely. He had to know Harvey wouldn’t give him the money, so what was he hoping for? Associates? They don’t have enough to spare at the moment. The library? The clinic has its own, and the Internet besides.

No, something better.

Mike wants to give them _himself._

Harvey lowers his gaze to his lap, moving his arms to his desk and leaning in. Taking a breath, he looks back up with all the sincerity he can manage. (He understands, he _does,_ it’s just that…)

“Look, Mike, I know you want to help these people,” he says, “and I told you when I hired you that you could work with the clinic on the side. But you know what we’re dealing with right now, with Gordon and the old partners trying to force their way back in here. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation, and this firm needs to be your top priority.”

Glowering at the floor, Mike shifts his weight left and right. Harvey frowns; he had to have seen this coming. Mike might feel like he owes that damn clinic for giving him his first job out of prison, but he’s already repaid that debt and then some, and as far as Harvey’s concerned, they don’t have any right to demand jack shit from him.

“Mike, you don’t work for them,” he reminds him. “You work for me.”

“I know,” Mike says instantly, raising his hands. “I know, but I mean… These kids, Harvey, I…”

Harvey tenses his jaw, his molars clacking together. This isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Mike will do the work he’s given, and if it’s Harvey directing him, he’ll do what he’s told, but every waking moment not monopolized by SL will go right to this clinic case. Mike’s preparing to run himself ragged to do it all, and if Harvey doesn’t give him the green light, there’s no way his work combatting Gordon won’t suffer for his distraction.

This fucking clinic is going to be the death of all of them. Mike in particular.

For the time being, though, Harvey doesn’t much feel like shooting himself in the foot just to prove a point.

“This is a one-time thing,” he warns. “And after this case is over, you and I are going to have a serious talk about where you’ve got your priorities set.”

“I—”

“I said we’d talk about it when the case is over,” Harvey cuts him off. “For now, I’m going to let you work with your pals at the clinic to get justice for these kids.”

Mike nods tightly. “Thank you, Harvey.”

“I’m gonna need you to be available if I need your help with Gordon,” he cautions, “because like it or not, this firm is still your home base, but as long as nothing you do gets in the way of the work _I’m_ doing…I’ll give you free reign.”

Mike nods again.

“I won’t let you down.”

Harvey leans back in his chair and sighs.

“Good luck, Mike.”

Mike goes with a certain resoluteness in his step, and Harvey hopes he understands what it is he’s just been given.

\---

On Wednesday, Mike, who Harvey has somehow barely seen in days despite waking up in the same bed every morning, storms into Harvey’s office with an oddly constrained sort of fury on his face that makes Harvey immediately set his work aside and consider calling a medical professional. Mike tries to slam the door in his wake, fails on account of the door check, and instead stomps across the floor, his teeth clenched and his fingers flexing in and out of cramped claws.

“Would you like to break something?” Harvey asks conversationally. Mike doesn’t seem to take it too well.

“I could handle this entire case better if I was working by _myself,_ ” he fumes, flinging his arm back toward the door as if inviting himself to leave.

Harvey fights the impulse to agree, figuring that isn’t quite the point of whatever he’s come in here to say. “What happened?” he asks as Mike glares at him darkly.

“Nathan missed a _filing deadline._ ”

Jesus Christ.

“Isn’t he the guy running the clinic?”

“Yes!”

Harvey scowls. That place is even more of a disaster area than he suspected.

“Are you going to file for an extension?”

Mike waves him off. “I did,” he says, “we got it, but god, Harvey, Nathan’s entire argument in court was basically ‘Yeah, I fucked up, but I really really want to win, so please let me try again!’ _God,_ ” he breathes, marching to the windows along the back wall and shoving his hands into his hair, “ _I_ almost wanted to turn him down.”

Harvey can certainly relate. “But you got the extension,” he says, turning in his chair to face Mike’s back. “So how’d you pull this one out of the fire?”

“I compared Collins’ history with these clinic cases to Nathan’s history with monetary damage restitutions,” he brushes off, “it was no contest, but Harvey, I’m telling you, if that judge hadn’t been sympathetic, if we hadn’t been so goddamn lucky…” He shakes his head disbelievingly.

“This entire case could’ve been tanked over one stupid mistake.”

And then all of this would’ve been for nothing.

Harvey presses his lips together and looks down at his knees. It’s the perfect opportunity to drag the clinic, the _perfect_ opportunity to try to draw Mike back home with the promise of as much pro bono as his tender heart desires, but if Mike has taught Harvey anything over their years of companionship, it’s the grace of occasional selflessness. Especially when it comes to Mike.

“It didn’t tank, though,” he says. “You did good, Mike, and if these families get a compensation anywhere close to what they deserve, it’ll be because of you.”

Mike shakes his head, turning back to the office and pacing across the floor. “I had Oliver set up a meeting with Collins to go over a settlement, I figured maybe we could finish this thing out of court, but I’m pretty sure public humiliation is the only thing that’s gonna be able to crack this guy.”

Harvey furrows his brow. “Mike, that doesn’t sound like you.”

“Well maybe it should be!”

Ah.

This isn’t about the case. Not really. Harvey lets his face settle into patient neutrality as he waits for Mike to come around and admit to whatever the underlying problem is. Nathan’s complete idiocy? Oliver’s poor showmanship in court? The clinic’s general inadequacy at living up to its lofty ideals?

He’ll get to it.

Sure enough, it’s not a minute later that Mike shakes his head, turning in an awkward little half circle and coming to a stop right in front of Harvey’s desk, shoving his hands into his pockets and turning his head to fix his eyes on the records lined up along the far wall.

“I got a job offer this morning.”

So that isn’t straight out of left field or anything. Harvey drums his fingers on his armrests and tries not to look too tense; Mike’s obviously pretty conflicted over this offer, whatever it is, and Harvey doesn’t much care for anything that makes Mike unhappy.

“How’d that happen?” he asks, which is the most open-ended question he can think of. Mike only shakes his head, and Harvey isn’t sure he heard it at all.

“This guy, Andy Forsyth, I'm on my way into the office and he walks up to me out of nowhere,” Mike rants, “tells me he’s opening a practice basically dedicated to huge class actions, like—like the clinic, but with Specter Litt money.”

Harvey nods slowly. “And what does he want _you_ to do?”

“He wants me to _run_ it.”

Harvey arches his eyebrows. Of all the batshit crazy schemes Mike’s ever put in front of him, that one’s gotta be one of the craziest.

“He wants you to _run_ it,” he repeats as Mike pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes crossing slightly, and begins pacing the floor again.

“Would you hate me if I said I was considering it?”

“Of course not,” Harvey dismisses. “I think you’re too smart to take it sight unseen, but it sounds right up your alley, I’d be more surprised if you _didn’t_ consider it.”

Mike huffs a frustrated sigh. “It… It’s in Seattle.”

In Seattle.

Seattle, Washington. The East Coast, clear across the country, three hours behind New York. That Seattle?

Harvey drums his fingers on his armrests.

“I see.”

Mike stops pacing in front of the record shelves.

“He gave me forty-eight hours to decide,” he says. “He’s staying at the Carlyle, I can let him know when I’ve made up my mind.”

Seattle.

“It’s crazy, right?” Mike turns to him nervously. “I can’t do it, right, I mean New York is—the only home I’ve ever known, I can’t just move across the country with no warning.”

Harvey watches impassively as Mike raises his hand to his mouth and drops it away.

“Can I?”

\---

After Mike’s run off to make his meeting with Oliver and Collins, Harvey decides that the best course of action is to put Mike’s job offer out of his mind entirely, instead settling in to figure out how to redouble his efforts to stop Gordon and his damn subversion. Seeking Soloff’s help was always a long shot, so his refusal doesn’t exactly count as a setback, but with Scottie… With Scottie, he’d really thought he’d had a chance, a new ally to recruit to their struggling campaign. A slim chance, perhaps, but one he’d told himself was worth pursuing, one he’d really started to believe in. Then she’d gone and turned him down without a second thought, without any room for negotiation, and as much as he hates to admit it, he’s pretty sure that bridge is finally burnt beyond repair.

So what’s left for him to do? His immediate instinct is to call Jessica, but knowing what little he does about her situation in Chicago, he doesn’t imagine she has much freedom to offer him her support. Louis is already doing everything he can, and he doesn’t much feel like pushing the limits of what Donna’s capable of handling. And of course Mike is—

Mike.

Harvey drops his head into his hands. There’s no way he’ll be able to concentrate on a situation as complicated as this one while Mike is so terribly distracted with work, and that _job offer,_ and did Harvey really think he’d be able to just ignore it? Mike has the chance to run a firm as big and as profitable as Specter Litt but doing the sort of work those assholes do at the legal clinic, and, well, that’s just about Mike’s dream, isn’t it? It’s everything he’s ever wanted.

In _Seattle._

Lacing his fingers together, Harvey raises them up in front of his mouth and stares blankly at the glass wall across the room. He’s never wanted to move to Seattle; once he got out of Massachusetts, once he settled in New York, he never particularly wanted to move anywhere else at all, much less Washington. Much less _Seattle._

But is he really willing to make such a relatively small detail into such an uncompromising deal breaker?

Is he willing to make Mike sacrifice his dream job over something so petty?

Well, when he puts it that way.

Actually, when he puts it that way…

Harvey frowns deeply, sighing as he resettles himself behind his hands. When he really thinks about it, who is this Forsyth guy, showing up out of nowhere, precisely at the moment that both Mike’s old firm is in jeopardy _and_ his pet clinic is enmeshed in a seemingly unwinnable class action suit, to offer him literally the most perfect-sounding job in the world? How is it that Harvey’s never heard of him before, or this magically self-sufficient firm he’s starting up? What’s he doing headhunting Mike to run it for him? Mike, who’s amazing in all sorts of ways, and one of the fastest learners Harvey’s ever met, but who is objectively _completely_ unqualified to be a managing partner of any sort, much less at a firm the size of the one Forsyth is describing.

On an impulse between a whim and a hunch, Harvey wakes up his laptop and opens LexisNexis, typing “Andy Forsyth” into the search bar without bothering to specify his terms. A few old cases pop up, stuff tied to major corporations that doesn’t center around him in any obvious way; he’s a lawyer, though, formerly employed at Porter Lofton, which is a firm Harvey’s heard of but never run up against himself. Anyway, Forsyth’s not just an entrepreneur, so that’s at least half a point in his favor, and the Public Records tab has a few more results that might be a little more helpful.

State of Washington Business License, filed 2017-05-04.

Son of a bitch. Looks like the guy’s legit after all.

Harvey leans back in his chair. Well, legit in his intentions, anyway; just because he’s poised to get the firm up and running on a technical level doesn’t mean he knows how to operate it. Harvey will give him the benefit of the doubt in assuming he has a business plan mapped out, checking and IOLTA accounts open and all that bureaucratic bullshit, but there’s no getting around the fact that headhunting Mike is a risky fucking move. Law partners look to change up their career trajectories all the time, there’s no way Forsyth couldn’t have found someone with more managerial experience to put in charge of his new project; hell, someone with more class action experience probably wouldn’t hurt, either.

On the other hand…

Harvey sighs wearily. Mike is killing himself here, trying to do everything for everyone, trying to be true to himself and still do work he doesn’t believe in, mostly for Harvey’s sake. He’s making sacrifices every goddamn day and it’s tearing him apart, and Harvey’s been denying it for far too long, hoping everything will just work out if he gives it some more time.

Thinking realistically, there’s no guarantee Harvey will be able to solve all of Specter Litt’s current and impending problems in time to save the firm; they may well be on the road to dissolution, and what’ll happen after that? Is he prepared to keep this increasingly obvious eventuality under his hat and throw all his employees out in the cold? Wouldn’t it be better to start the process now, to warn everybody to stop taking on new business and give them time to find work elsewhere rather than force them to risk being downsized? Jessica’s making a life for herself in Chicago, so he knows it can be done, and what better fresh start to embark on than moving to a new city with the man he loves to help him follow his dreams?

It’ll be hard work. All of it, from closing down Specter Litt to finding new work in a new state, but he’ll make it happen. Maybe they can do a total one-eighty, him and Mike; Mike can be the one throwing himself into his business while Harvey divides his time between his work and helping out a friend in need. Well, more than a friend, but the principle is the same.

Closing his eyes, Harvey tips his head back. Yeah. This is the right call. It’ll take a little time to come to terms with it, but…yeah. It’s what’s best for all of them.

It has to be because of all the stress, but Harvey begins nodding off right at his desk when a gentle knock at his door jolts him back to consciousness.

Funnily enough, it’s Mike standing in the entryway with a sheepish expression on his face, leaning into the room as though he’s afraid of interrupting something. Closing his laptop and pushing it a couple of inches to the side, Harvey rights himself in his chair and beckons Mike forward.

“How’d the meeting go?”

Mike shakes his head. “Collins offered a hundred thousand per family and I told him to get out of my face,” he summarizes. Harvey rests his elbows on his desk.

“So you’re going to court.”

“Public humiliation,” Mike reminds him. “I’m gonna do right by these kids, Harvey, no matter what it takes.”

Harvey nods slowly. “Alright.”

Mike nods back, standing opposite Harvey with his feet planted firmly.

That can’t be all of it; Harvey can wait.

After a little while, Mike shifts his weight, settling on his left side and biting the inside of his cheek.

“I thought about the job offer.”

Harvey leans forward over his arms and looks up enquiringly.

“Don’t rush into anything,” he cautions, but Mike only smiles.

“I’m not gonna take it.”

And after all that dread and angst, to think the answer could be as simple as this. Harvey quirks his eyebrows and smiles back.

“What happened?”

“I was in that meeting,” Mike confesses readily, probably having already reviewed his response several times, “and as much as I want to take it— As much as I _think_ I want to take it, as much as I feel like I _should_ want to take it, when I was in that meeting with Oliver, I realized that it’s the kind of work I want to be doing, it’s the kind of law I’ve always wanted to practice, but it’s not…” Pinching his lips, he raises his hands forlornly. “It’s not the way I want to practice it.”

Harvey taps his fingertips against the desk. “You’d have the run of the place.”

“I basically have the run of the place _now,_ ” Mike points out. “I can barely control this tiny little clinic, and when I’m not micromanaging every single part of whatever case I’m working on, somehow the whole thing always goes to shit. There’s no way I’m ready to run an entire firm, especially not something as big as what Forsyth’s talking about.”

He’s right. He’s right about all of it, no arguments there, and Harvey can’t pretend he isn’t relieved that this is how everything is turning out. He can’t, and if Mike asks, he won’t.

“You’re sure?” he asks anyway, because he has to.

“I am,” Mike says. “Something was off about this whole thing anyway,” he carries on critically, “the forty-eight hour deadline, him relying on this one little class action to carry him into the spotlight, to give him enough cred to make his living taking on Fortune 500s, the—the fact that he’s got this firm apparently all set up and ready to go but he still doesn’t have someone to run it, I mean…”

Harvey smiles softly. There’s his guy.

“We would’ve made it work,” he says. “Just so you know, Mike, if you’d decided this was what you wanted, I would’ve found a way.”

Mike grins, but it trails off into a nervous frown soon enough as he shifts his weight again.

“Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Harvey says immediately, “this is your decision.”

Mike chuckles quietly and tips his chin down to his chest, turning and leaning into the desk until he might as well be sitting on it.

“Harvey,” he murmurs, tilting toward him enticingly as Harvey smirks.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s the biggest load of shit I’ve heard in my entire life.”

Harvey laughs abruptly, and Mike flicks him on the forehead.

“I don’t want to make a decision by myself that affects both of us,” he says. “And if you think I’m moving across the country by myself and leaving you behind, you’ve got another thing coming, so just tell me. Honestly. What do you think?”

Reaching across the desk, Harvey takes Mike’s hand firmly. “I think you’re listening to your gut,” he says, “and I think you’re making the right call.”

Mike laces their fingers together and nods to himself.

“My gut,” he announces after a moment, sharpening his gaze, “is telling me not to abandon my family in their hour of need.”

Harvey’s conviction flags a little; wasn’t Mike just complaining about the clinic’s disarray and poor management? As much as he admires and respects him for not bailing on them in the middle of this mess they’ve gotten themselves into, it stings, just a little, that he’s really come to think of them as his family, when all Harvey’s cultivated with the place is a fairly derogatory impression.

“You’re a good man, Mike,” he says anyway, squeezing their hands together again.

“I know, right?” Mike slides off the desk and sets himself back on his feet. “So how’re we going to get rid of Gordon?”

_What?_

“Mike,” Harvey intones. “You’re already in over your head with the Discharge Power case, don’t do something stupid just because you think you need to be everybody’s hero.”

Mike folds his arms and glares petulantly. “Are you saying you don’t want my help?”

“I’m saying I don’t want you to wear yourself out trying to do a thousand things at once,” Harvey corrects.

Dropping his arms, Mike waves him off. “Oliver and Nathan are looking into the history of the plant around the school we’re representing in the suit, I think I can leave them to fend for themselves for a little while.”

“You’re sure they won’t go bankrupt without you looking over their shoulders?” Harvey asks wryly. Mike snorts a laugh and shakes his head.

“If they do, they don’t deserve my help anyway,” he says. “So,” he smacks his hands down on the desk, “bring me up to speed.”

Opening his laptop back up, Harvey turns it to face Mike and begins to lay out the situation, hoping the hearts in his eyes aren’t too obvious, or, at the very least, that Mike won’t make fun of him for it later.

Well. He’s allowed.

\---

As it happens, Mike manages to refrain from poking fun at Harvey’s infatuation until dinner that night, but given that Mike had the bright idea to subvert Gordon’s aggressive takeover efforts by approaching Robert Zane with a merger offer, Harvey decides not to hold it against him. He’s pretty successful at it, too, until Mike timidly announces that he’ll be unavailable to help actually craft the proposal, given that he’ll be spending the whole of the next day at the clinic working on discovery.

Merely requesting to be kept abreast of any major updates, specifically those which put undue demands on Mike’s time, Harvey gives his blessing, which is how he ends up the next morning sulking over a blank copy of his preferred template for large-scale merger agreements and trying to think of the most enticing things he can offer Robert without turning his own stomach.

All in all, not the best situation for Donna to walk in on with another unconditional request for forgiveness.

Tapping gently on his closed door, she pushes it open without waiting to be invited, her demurely hunched shoulders and hesitant expression the only things keeping him from casting her back out immediately.

“Hey,” she begins as he sighs loudly, slamming down the screen of his laptop with much more force than can be good for the poor machine.

“Now’s not a great time,” he warns, but she only smiles.

“I know,” she says. “I don’t want to bother you.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Tightening her lips into a grimace, she looks down at the floor.

“I just wanted to congratulate you,” she says after a moment, raising her gaze back to his face as he frowns quizzically.

“The merger’s still in the planning phase, I haven’t even spoken to Zane about it yet.”

She nods. “I know.”

He waits for her to go on, leaning forward impatiently when she doesn’t.

“And?”

The corners of her mouth tilt up with obvious effort.

“I wanted to congratulate you because I heard you and Mike had moved in together.”

No wonder Harvey didn’t see that one coming. His eyes twitch along the lower lids as he cocks his head. “That was two months ago.”

Donna nods. “I know. Rachel just told me about it, I guess she thought I already knew. Why wouldn’t I, right, I mean…” She points at herself with a self-deprecating smile. “I’m Donna.”

Reclining in his chair, Harvey raises his right hand toward his face, resting his index finger against his lips. This is more than just another attempt to persuade him that she deserves his forgiveness for assaulting him, and all the impudence that’s guided her behavior since; she seems genuinely contrite for once, maybe even genuinely willing to apologize.

“You’ve always expected a lot of yourself,” he allows, and she laughs shyly.

“I have to make sure I deserve the things I want,” she says. “I think I got a little ahead of myself.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Harvey,” she carries on heedlessly, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took advantage of our friendship, I’m sorry I made you think you couldn’t trust me. I’m… I’m sorry for everything.”

Tenting his fingers in front of his face, he regards her carefully for a minute. Her sincere expression doesn’t change, nor does her resoluteness; she really means it this time, doesn’t she? And when it comes right down to it, isn’t this what he’s really wanted? Isn’t this exactly what he’s been waiting for from her?

Lowering his hands to his lap, he offers a small smile.

“What changed?”

She clasps her hands tightly, her knuckles reddening and fading to white. “When Rachel told me about you and Mike,” she says, “I realized that as happy as I was for you, as happy as I am, my first thought wasn’t about how great you guys are for each other, or that I should start planning your wedding now to save myself some time later on; it was that I wished you’d been the one to tell me that it happened in the first place, and when I thought about why you hadn’t…”

Looking down in an effort to collect herself, she raises her eyes back to him with a tender expression that he can’t help but feel moved by.

“I’m just sorry it took me so long to figure out something I should’ve known from the start.”

It’s everything he’s wanted from her and everything he’s told himself he shouldn’t expect.

He nods, raising himself up out of his desk chair.

“Thank you.”

She nods, grinning appreciatively, and for a moment, everything is back as it was; they’re exactly as they were before she kissed him, before she decided she knew more about how to manage a law firm than he did, before they suddenly disagreed on absolutely everything. It’s just the beginning, he knows, but it’s a start, and a pretty good one, when all’s said and done.

With everything looming just beyond the horizon, he’ll take every ally he can get.

“I was just thinking,” he says, walking slowly toward the cabinet against the wall where he keeps his scotch, “I could use a drink.”

Donna chuckles. “It’s eleven thirty in the morning.”

Harvey arches his eyebrows. “Feel free to abstain.”

“Oh,” she steps forward with her hand already outstretched, “I don’t think so.”

Yeah; back to normal.

It’s a start.

\---

Harvey knew all along that the solution to the situation with Gordon, however it turned out, would be a fucking mess, probably resulting in a few double crosses and deals made in bad faith, but he somehow missed foreseeing himself steadily losing passion for, or even interest in finding a solution to bring everything back to the status quo. He and Louis may have figured out Gordon’s true plan to override their voting power with a merger with Rand Kaldor Zane—or most of it, anyway—but what good does that really do them, when all’s said and done?

At least Mike’s research into Discharge Power is coming along well; it probably helps that he’s got Oliver working the damn suit every waking second, but Harvey suspects that Mike and his fifteen thousand words per minute speed reading are ultimately more to thank for all they’ve accomplished so far.

Of course, ten o’clock on a Friday night, sitting on the sofa next to Mike as they steal each other’s fried rice and orange chicken and ignore the FX broadcast of _Dodgeball_ playing in the background, is neither the time nor the place to be concerned with problems like that. No, times like this are for being a little daring.

A little bit crazy.

“Hey,” Harvey says as Mike dunks a piece of broccoli into Harvey’s orange sauce, “you remember that offer Forsyth made you last month, about the firm in Seattle?”

Mike nods thoughtfully. “If you’re having second thoughts, I’m pretty sure the offer’s expired.”

Smiling wryly, Harvey sets his chicken on the coffee table and settles in with his arm across the back of the sofa in just the right position for Mike to cuddle up against him. “No second thoughts,” he says. “I’m just thinking about what’s going to happen when these cases of ours wrap up, if we’re not moving to Rain City.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about that until after these cases wrapped up,” Mike says as he reaches out to set his fried rice next to the chicken.

“We weren’t. Now we are.”

Mike arches his eyebrows. “Really.”

Hooking his arm around Mike’s neck, Harvey pulls him close and presses a kiss to his temple. “I don’t like seeing you unhappy.”

“What?” Bracing his hand against Harvey’s chest, Mike pushes back to look him in the eye. “You think I’m unhappy?”

“I think you will be when you finish this suit.”

Mike frowns. “You think I’m going to lose?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Harvey.” Mike pulls his legs up onto the sofa and resettles himself, sliding his hand from Harvey’s chest up to his shoulder and holding on tight. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing, yet.

Harvey bites the inside of his cheek. Mike is doing all this work for the clinic out of his love of helping people, his love of using the law to do it; he might be blind to how they’re taking advantage of him, but then again, he might not be. Maybe he just doesn’t care, maybe he thinks the benefits outweigh the cost.

Not to Harvey, they don’t.

“Apparently, when Donna was getting our lease renewed,” he begins cautiously, “she found out that Rand Kaldor Zane had rented out three additional floors in their building that they’re not using for anything yet.”

“So Zane turned down your proposal, but RKZ is still expanding,” Mike says immediately.

Harvey nods. “That’s what we figured.”

Mike narrows his eyes. “We use three floors.”

He didn’t expect any less, but Harvey still can’t help but be impressed that Mike reached the conclusion even faster than Louis did.

“Yeah, we do,” Harvey confirms. “And I pointed that out to Zane, but the thing is, it turns out his partners didn’t exactly clue him in on their plan to absorb our firm into theirs.”

“They’re kicking him out?” Mike sits back bewilderedly. “But didn’t they all found that firm together?”

“I’m not sure,” Harvey says. “Robert said they’ve been together twenty-six years, but that’s not really the point. Mike, if Gordon and his guys come back and vote with Rand and Kaldor to merge behind all of our backs, Specter Litt will disappear.”

“So we’ll get Robert to bring enough of his guys over to merge with us before that happens,” Mike challenges at once. “This is his daughter’s firm, he wouldn’t let something like that happen to her.”

Harvey smiles wanly. He’s taught Mike well, and the kid’s come a long way from where he started; too bad it doesn’t matter now.

“We tried that,” he confesses. “Louis and I made pretty much that exact argument, but he doesn’t want to risk being thrown out on his ass, and he says Rachel can take care of herself.”

“Family values,” Mike mutters. Harvey laughs quietly.

“This point,” he sums up, “is that whatever firm, or firms, we end up with when everyone’s done fighting and stabbing each other in the back over all this shit, Rand, Kaldor, and Gordon are probably going to be sitting at the head of the table, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure I want to stick around to see that happen.”

Family values.

Leaning back until he hits the sofa’s armrest, Mike stares at Harvey blankly; “uncomprehending” is the word that leaps to mind, and it’s not a concept Harvey is accustomed to associating with Mike, but to be fair, this is a lot to take in all at once.

“You want to cut and run?” Mike asks. Harvey hears the undercurrent in his tone, “You want to abandon your family,” but Mike has to know Harvey better than that, he has to know that Harvey would never. This is something different, this is something else.

This is about _saving_ his family.

“I want to leave on my own terms,” Harvey says. “I want to leave a firm I was proud to be a part of instead of stay and watch my home, this place I used to love, turn into something I don’t even recognize; I want to leave before it turns me into someone I don’t want to be.”

Resting his hands between his knees, Mike lowers his gaze from Harvey’s face to somewhere around his chest, his lips parting slightly as his breathing becomes audibly slower. Measured.

Harvey waits.

“What’s going to happen to the clinic?” Mike asks then, and Harvey doesn’t know why he’s at all surprised.

“I’m pretty sure the new management isn’t going to like one of their top guys spending half his time on a charity project,” Harvey says. Mike smiles wearily; he must have suspected as much.

“You don’t think I could change Robert’s mind?” he asks. “If I just gave it a shot?”

Harvey rubs his hand over Mike’s knee. “I don’t think so. He was pretty rattled when I told him about Rand and Kaldor, and when Louis went back to try again, he just dug in his heels. I think he wants to clean up the mess he has on his hands right now before he gets caught up in a new one.”

Mike nods slowly.

“So…what’re we going to do?”

That’s only about a fifty million dollar question. Harvey slides his hand over Mike’s knee again and sighs through his teeth.

“Well,” he hedges, “I know the circumstances of Forsyth’s offer weren’t ideal, but I think he might’ve had the right idea.”

Mike tilts his head curiously.

“Taking down Fortune 500s?”

Harvey lowers his gaze and smiles.

“I’m not eliminating the possibility, but I was thinking our mission statement could be a little less…exclusive.”

Mike grins. “We’d go all the way up to the Fortune 1000?”

Shrugging, Harvey reaches to take Mike’s hand. “More like all the pro bono you want,” he says casually. “I’ll tell you one thing, you handling all that yourself would give me a lot more freedom to work the big ticket items. Really build up our profit margin.”

It’s a perfectly reasonable proposition. Sure, they’ll have to draw up a business model and do a hell of a lot of preparation, opening accounts and finding real estate and establishing a clientele and all, but it’ll keep them in the city, if they want, or they can move, if Mike wants to get away; they’ll both be doing work they love, work they’re passionate about, together, and with all the upheaval at SL, they can probably solicit a few of their colleagues to join them. RKZ probably has a numbers guy of their own, Louis won’t be too keen to share the spotlight; Mike is the only person Harvey can think of who Benjamin really respects, he’d follow him anywhere; Rachel probably isn’t interested in working at her father’s firm, given how much time and energy she’s put into defining her career separate from him.

There’s a lot to work with.

Mike clasps Harvey’s hand between his, interlacing and untangling their fingers.

“You want to start our own firm.”

“It’s just an idea.”

Mike smiles affectionately. “That’s a pretty big offer.”

Harvey rubs his thumb along the side of Mike’s hand.

“It’s something to think about.”

“Nah,” Mike says, pulling Harvey’s hand closer to his chest. “I don’t need to think about it. I mean, I guess ‘Specter Ross’ has a pretty nice ring to it.”

“You’re not even gonna fight me on that one?”

“I figure you’ve done enough to deserve top billing.”

Harvey breaks into a giddy smile that Mike returns immediately, leaning in to nose at his cheek and kiss him lightly.

“Specter Ross,” huh?

Well, when you’re right, you’re right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “He used to work for Porter Lofton, and this whole thing was a ploy.”  
> —Mike, regarding Forsyth, “[Tiny Violin](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s07e15)” (s07e15)
> 
> From start (a single plaintiff filing a complaint) to finish (sentencing of the defendant or dismissal of the suit after completion of a trial, or court approval of a settlement offer if a trial is averted), class action suits typically take between nine months and three years to complete. Eastside Legal Clinic’s class action against Discharge Power took about four days.
> 
> (Oliver complains that Nathan’s forgetting to file litigation certifying their case as a class action “ruins three months of work,” but I don’t know what, exactly, they were doing in that time, because discovery, which is when all the research is done, only happens after litigation has been filed; pre-action disclosure exists, but doesn’t really apply in this case since Nathan and Oliver knew from the get who the plaintiffs and defendants were, and what charges they intended to levy against Discharge Power.
> 
> (And just in case anyone is under the impression that _anyone_ on the _Suits_ writing staff knows anything about law, or continuity, or the passage of time, in the middle of “Good-Bye,” Oliver says “[Discharge Power] redid the entire grounds six weeks after we filed suit,” except that “filed suit” is the same thing as “filed litigation,” which happened, at _most,_ three days prior to that statement.)
> 
> A merger between two law firms typically takes a few months to complete. That doesn’t exactly apply here, since Harvey and Mike won’t end up sticking around for SL’s merger with RKZ, but if anyone’s interested in lining up the amount of time that the class action and the merger are taking…there you go.


	6. Good-Bye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is much more concerned with wrapping up the narrative established in the previous chapters of this fic than it is with keeping in line with the plot of “Good-Bye” (s07e16); however, they do have a few things in common that shouldn’t be too difficult to pick out.

Mike falls into bed at—Harvey glances at the clock—twelve thirty-three with a loud groan that momentarily interrupts Harvey’s reading but doesn’t surprise him in the slightest, given that some variant of the gesture has been Mike’s constant every night for going on two months now. As placidly as possible, Harvey nestles his bookmark between the pages of _Dead Wake_ and sets the book on the bedside table, folding his hands over his stomach and looking at Mike with an unwearied smile as Mike throws his arms over his eyes and sighs.

“Tell me again,” he mumbles.

Harvey reaches over to pet his hair.

“It’s going to work.”

As he smiles, Mike’s chest trembles with his repressed laughter.

“You sure?”

Harvey scratches lightly across Mike’s scalp.

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

Lifting his right arm off his face, Mike flails about until his hand finds Harvey, grabbing his arm and pulling him down onto Mike’s chest in an ill-advised move that doesn’t turn out especially comfortably for either of them as Harvey loses his balance and lands his elbow in Mike’s sternum. Making every effort to recover even a shred of decorum, Harvey braces his hands on either side of Mike’s chest and rises up over him, looking down into his eyes.

“One more time,” Mike murmurs.

Harvey leans down to kiss him.

“Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Mike wraps his arms around Harvey’s shoulders and pulls him close, pressing his face into the curve of his neck.

“You’re the best.”

\---

Surprisingly, or maybe not so, Mike is as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as Harvey has ever seen him come morning, the previous night’s apprehension all but forgotten. Good thing, too, being that today is the day they intend to begin recruiting ahead of the unannounced but certainly pending merger between Rand Kaldor Zane (none too subtly aspiring to become a monopoly) and Specter Litt (still referred to as such perhaps out of Louis’s loyalty to Harvey, or perhaps his fear of being the sole face of an inarguably struggling firm).

There’s no reason to be worried. While Specter Ross LLC hasn’t technically launched yet, they’ve secured real estate—a large office rather than a whole floor, much less three, but more than sufficient for a firm currently staffed by only two people—and their bank accounts and insurance policies are all in order, the cash flow courtesy of their substantial personal checking accounts until the firm itself starts generating revenue; they’ve purchased the latest versions of all the software they need, and Mike’s thrown together a simple website mockup until they can put together something better. Admittedly, their business plan in its current form is heavily reliant on building a brand-name clientele fairly quickly, but Harvey suspects that once the news officially drops that RKZ and SL are merging to the tune of massive internal shakeups, it won’t be too difficult to tempt some of his old clients away.

“What do you think,” Mike asks, bringing his cereal bowl over to the kitchen island and sliding into one of the chairs there. “Do I start with Rachel or Benjamin?”

Raising his coffee mug to his lips, Harvey arches his eyebrows and shrugs.

“Do you want to start with the hard sell or the softball?”

Mike taps his spoon against the side of the bowl. “Which is which?”

“You’d know that better than I would.”

Resting his arms on the countertop and sinking down into his shoulder blades, Mike hums thoughtfully, though the solemn mien lasts only a few moments before he shakes his head quickly and looks up with a grin.

“I’ll be fine,” he declares. Harvey tries not to be too floored by his unabashed enthusiasm.

As he reaches across the island, grabbing the back of Mike’s head and pulling him forward into a kiss, he decides to give up the pretense.

“You’re amazing.”

Mike smiles down at his cereal bowl. “You’ve got a harder job than I do.”

Harvey frowns a little. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

Raising his mug back to his lips, Harvey meets Mike’s abrupt glare, the swift hardness in his eyes, the set firmness of his mouth.

Nervous. Mike is nervous. No, it’s not just that; Mike is _terrified._

With all the patience he has in him, Harvey sets his mug down beside the sink and leans forward, holding Mike’s gaze and very pointedly refraining from touching him.

“Everything is going to be fine,” he says firmly.

Mike looks uneasily into his eyes, his eyebrows knitting together. Harvey merely waits, content to give Mike all the time he needs; for all his bravado, his spirited determination, his refusal to give up when the chips are down, all his strength and learned hardness in the face of adversity…

The biggest risks never get any easier, do they?

Finally, Mike nods, planting his hands on the countertop and narrowing his gaze.

“We’re gonna kick ass.”

The corner of Harvey’s mouth twitches in a smirk.

“They ask any questions, just nod your head and look pretty.”

For a moment, Harvey fears the joke might’ve fallen flat, but then he sees the instant the quip clicks in Mike’s mind, his bewilderment transforming into an indulgent grin as he reaches out to swat Harvey across the head and tries not to giggle.

Yeah. Yeah, they’ll be fine.

\---

Aside from Mike’s somewhat spontaneous lunch date with Rachel a few weeks ago, neither Mike nor Harvey has been back to Specter Litt since their departure six weeks prior; Harvey doesn’t know what he expected, but the building isn’t exactly radiating dark energy, and he’s yet to see a single demonic toady clambering about. Checking in at the security station is a little weird, but no more so than giving their notices and walking through the dark halls with boxes full of their belongings; the guard waves them up indifferently, and Harvey sticks his guest pass to his belt as Mike pins his to his jacket’s out breast pocket.

“Okay,” Mike says, rolling his shoulders back and shaking his hands as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Okay, we got this, we’re good.”

Harvey clasps his hands in front of his body and watches the elevator indicator tick up.

“We got this,” Mike psyches himself up. “We’re awesome.”

Harvey sighs out through his nose as the doors open on the fiftieth floor.

“Where are you going first?”

“Huh?” Mike looks over abruptly, his eyes slightly wider than normal. “Rachel. Rachel.”

Harvey nods, clapping him on the back.

“Kick some ass.”

Clenching his fists, Mike strides off toward Rachel’s office with his head held high as Harvey looks after him and smiles. He’ll be fine; he knows their business plan inside and out, and Rachel and Benjamin love him, the way people do. He’ll invite Rachel out for lunch, he’ll give her a break from whatever shit is on her plate with the pending merger, and by the time he’s done pitching, she’ll be demanding to join them. Benjamin… He isn’t sure how that conversation will go down, but Mike will know what to do.

As for himself…

He and Louis didn’t part on bad terms or anything of the sort, and he’s not exactly worried he’ll be thrown out on his ass, but the intersection of Louis’s loyalty to the firm and his camaraderie with Harvey lies at a point that Harvey can’t quite define, that he can’t quite use to predict the future with enough certainty to bet on it. Pointing out that RKZ almost certainly intends to bring in their own numbers guy to upstage Louis might be enough to convince him, but it could just as easily backfire if Louis is determined to prove his value to the new regime. Maybe Harvey should go the straight up flattery route, assuring him that Specter Ross is dead in the water without him, except then he might try to angle for name partnership right out of the gate, or take offense at Harvey’s fawning and refuse to help them at all.

Alright, pump the brakes, you goddamn pessimist.

Everything’s going to be okay.

Taking a quick breath to stabilize himself, Harvey makes his way down the hall to Louis’s office, opening the door and walking in without waiting to be invited. Hunched over his desk, the phone cradled to his ear, Louis doesn’t even notice him at first, his face twisted in obvious frustration at whatever the person on the other end of the call is telling him; Harvey rocks back on his heels and waits, quietly revising his game plan.

A couple of minutes later, Louis slams the phone down in its cradle, dropping his elbows down onto his desk and his forehead into his hands, and Harvey sneaks forward to take advantage of the opportunity.

“Having a good day?”

Startled, Louis looks up frenetically, freezing the moment he sees Harvey front of him.

“Harvey,” he condemns, once he’s finally regained control of himself. “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working to clean up the mess you and Mike left behind with when you abandoned us?”

Harvey smirks. “That’s not going to work,” he says wryly. “We each gave three weeks’ notice and you know it.”

“And then you _left,_ ” Louis grouses, and if that isn’t the most obvious opening he’s ever heard.

“You could come with us.”

Flinching back, Louis narrows his eyes as his lips part weakly. “Harvey,” he hedges, “if you’re asking me to join you two in some sort of…swinging thing—”

“Whoa,” Harvey interrupts, “no, Louis, come on. Mike and I are starting our own firm and we could use a numbers guy. Someone who really knows his way around the SEC.”

Louis grins his familiar cocky little grin, preening under the admittedly earned praise, though it’s quickly overcome by his equally familiar suspicious squint as his upper lip curls over his sizeable front teeth.

“You don’t think I can cut it here.”

Harvey saw this coming. He did. It’s fine.

“Like hell I don’t,” he says jovially. “You’re Louis goddamn Litt, you can make it anywhere. All I’m saying is that I don’t think you should have to spend time proving yourself if there’s a better option out there for you.”

“And you think working for you is a better option,” Louis says. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

No surprise there. Harvey arches his eyebrows, shrugging sympathetically.

“You know as well as I do that Rand and Kaldor are going to bring their own financial specialist, and you can stick around here to have it out with that bastard if you want to, but I think you know that they’re going to take his side over yours every chance they get.”

Tenting his fingers, Louis leans back in his chair, looking at Harvey from under his half-lowered lids in a decent emulation of the superior figure he desperately aspires to be. Harvey works to keep a straight face, doing his best to take him seriously.

“You don’t think I could prove them wrong?” Louis presses.

“I don’t think you should have to waste half your time on your bosses giving you the runaround,” Harvey corrects. “You’re too good at what you do to be forced to jump through all those hoops to accomplish things you could do in half the time if you just worked with people who respected you.”

Louis hums a long note under his breath, somehow leaning back even deeper into his chair.

“Look,” Harvey says before he can get fed up waiting for a reply, “I know this is a big thing we’re asking, and there’s a lot going on here right now, so how about you sleep on it and get back to me tomorrow?”

“I’ll get back to you when I make up my mind,” Louis says coolly. Harvey nods; Louis is just putting on airs, it won’t be more than a day or two.

“Good luck with your client,” he says silkily, tipping his head toward the phone and walking out to Louis’s dry scowl.

All in all, that went about as well as he could’ve hoped.

Now for Donna.

Harvey walks stiffly down the hall, momentarily closing his eyes. They’re in a good place, the two of them; they understand each other again. Maybe not as well as they used to, back in the day, but close. She’ll listen to his proposition. Everything will be okay.

Approaching her office, he isn’t enormously surprised to find her already looking up at him with an amiable smile on her face.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

Harvey slips his hands into his pockets. “Guess I couldn’t stay away for long.”

Donna hums pleasantly. “So are you going to offer me a job or what?”

Well that was quick. Maybe they’re more in sync than he thought.

Then Donna shakes her head with a teasing little grin, waving off his bemusement. “Rachel just called,” she says, laying her hand down on top of her phone. “She told me about her chat with Mike, and I figured you might be dropping by.”

He makes a low noise in the back of his throat. The subversion is more than a little frustrating, but at least now he doesn’t have to search for a natural way to broach the subject.

“So what do you think?” he asks. “We could use a good office manager.”

She lowers her gaze sedately, and Harvey wonders what she thought he was going to offer her, if her expectations were at all realistic. Surely she didn’t think he would ask to hire her as a chief operating officer; even if Specter Ross was a large enough firm to require one, he won’t be pressured into making the same mistake twice.

“So you’re asking me to quit my job for a demotion at a start-up that hasn’t even started yet,” she summarizes, looking up at him.

Fair enough.

“I think you know there’s more to it than that,” he evades. “Rand Kaldor Zane is a a bigger firm than Specter Litt, they’re going to want the top brass to know with their MO like the backs of their hands.”

Not to mention the fact that there won’t be anyone around for her to emotionally blackmail into promoting her to a position for which she’s objectively unqualified.

Folding her hands together in front of her face, she draws her lips into her mouth, biting down as her gaze darts away, and he knows she’s arrived at the same conclusion.

“Look, Donna, I’m not trying to be petty,” he promises. “We’re a small firm, and even if we needed a COO, we— We’re starting this firm from the ground up, and with the way the market’s evolving, the COO position isn’t just for managers anymore. You have to know about financial management, partner compensation, battling for market share and protecting profits, understanding alternative fee structures, legal project management…”

“Alright,” she cuts him off, “alright. I get it.”

Harvey shrugs, and Donna smiles thinly.

“I’ll need time to give notice,” she says.

“Of course.”

They look at each other appraisingly for a moment before Donna’s smile widens, her eyes crinkling up at the corners when Harvey smiles back.

“I’ve missed working with you,” she confesses as Harvey nods.

“It’ll be good to have you back.”

As her gaze slips from affection to mocking imperiousness, Donna taps her delicately manicured fingernail against the papers spread across her desk. “I haven’t quit yet,” she says.

“Yeah,” Harvey says quickly, “I should get back home; I’ve gotta talk to Mike about how things went with Rachel and Benjamin.”

“Don’t think this changes anything about me planning your wedding.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Donna rolls her eyes and bends over her work, and Harvey chuckles to himself as he strolls out into the hall with a refreshing lightness in his chest, wondering why he bothered getting so worked up in the first place. If Rachel’s already called Donna about the job offer, Mike probably had better luck with her than Harvey did with Louis; fortunately, he doesn’t have to wait long to find out, being that Mike is lingering restlessly by the elevators, his eyes lighting up when he sees Harvey draw near.

“How’d it go?” he asks quietly as Harvey drapes his arm across his shoulders.

“Pretty well,” he hedges. “I’ll tell you about it when we get home. How about you?”

Mikes make a noble effort to keep the ecstatic grin off his face, but it doesn’t work out especially well.

“The last thing Rachel wants to do is work for her father,” he says. “I told her what we were planning and it took her about…five seconds to accept.”

“Did you talk to Benjamin?” Harvey asks, rubbing Mike’s back restlessly as they board the elevator.

Mike winces. “I ran into him in the hall on my way to Rachel’s office; I showed him that website I designed, and after he finished lecturing me about how badly it sucks, he basically told me he was joining our firm to, quote, ‘save us from ourselves.’”

“Nice work.”

“Yeah, see, I told you everything would work out.”

That little smartass. Harvey’s about to tell him that, too, until he turns to Mike and sees his shy smile, the embarrassed flush across his face; he knows what he’s doing. Knows what he’s saying.

Harvey hears what he’s asking.

“You sure called that one,” he concedes, settling his arm around Mike’s waist. Mike lays his hand over Harvey’s and squeezes.

“Thank you, Harvey.”

Harvey nods. “What’d I tell you,” he murmurs.

The elevator doors open as the carriage reaches the lobby, and Mike beams.

\---

All told, everything at the new firm settles remarkably quickly, particularly after Louis drops his front and agrees to join them. His first proposition, to solicit Jim Reynolds and Decker Pharmaceutical away from the remains of Specter Litt, turns out to be an even greater boon than any of them anticipated at the time; once Louis starts subtly pointing out to his and Harvey’s old clients that the new guard at RKZ can’t even hold onto SL’s oldest and most loyal clientele, a surprising number of them just so happen to decide that they might be due for a change of legal representation.

The subsequent explosion of Specter Ross’s client list is almost too much for them to keep up with in such a short amount of time; the massive amounts of paperwork required to establish so many new clients combined with the uncertainty of each of them trying to prove themselves by operating independently almost does them in right out of the gate. Miraculously, though, between Benjamin’s excruciatingly detailed database construction, Donna’s expert communication and organizational skills, Rachel’s ability to somehow be everyone’s associate at once, Harvey’s, Mike’s, and Louis’s quick-witted proficiencies with the law, and their collective realization that teamwork is a far better approach than unabashed egoism, they somehow manage to pull it off.

Strangely enough, once the dust settles, precious little of the drama from their old lives follows them to their new ones. Of course, it helps that they do their best not to let it.

“You know who called me today?” Mike says whimsically one night. Harvey glances up from his sweet and sour pork to make an inquisitive noise, and Mike smirks.

“Oliver Grady.”

Not that the past is _entirely_ inescapable.

“That jackass from the clinic?” Harvey asks skeptically. “The hell did he want?”

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Mike confides, “but he wants my help with a class action against Teva Pharmaceutical.”

“I absolutely do believe it,” Harvey counters, “the same way I believe you told him to fuck himself.”

Mike snorts an ungainly laugh. “Now that you mention it, I kind of wish I had.”

Harvey narrows his eyes. “Mike, you didn’t.”

“No I did not agree to help him out, but thanks for your faith in my self-respect.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

Yeah.

It isn’t that Harvey is displeased with the direction the conversation has taken, but after a minute or so of Mike’s continued silence, he does start to wonder if the punchline might have gone over his head.

Setting his chopsticks down, Harvey twists his face in such a way as to cock only one of his eyebrows. “And?” he prompts.

Mike looks up with a soft smile totally separate from Harvey’s inelegant expression.

“Nothing,” he says fondly. “I was just thinking about how lucky I am that my life turned out the way it did.”

A snappy retort is on the tip of his tongue, “You make your own luck” or something along those lines, but quite unexpectedly, the force of Mike’s words hits Harvey right between the eyes, or in the chest, or the stomach, or sort of all over, and all he can do is grin like an idiot.

After everything he’s been through, every hardship, every setback, every moment of suffering, all the bad decisions and the bad luck and the wrong turns and the dark hours, Mike considers himself _lucky._ Lucky to be doing the work he does, having the friends he has, living the life he lives. Lucky to be with Harvey.

As though Harvey isn’t the one thanking his lucky stars every day that Mike’s chosen him.

“C’mere,” he says briskly, standing from the dining table and beckoning Mike over to the armchairs, toward the liquor cabinet. Looking on with some concern, Mike reaches for his napkin to wipe off his mouth before standing to follow Harvey, pausing by the table where they keep the tumblers when Harvey turns back to him.

“Something wrong?” Mike asks carefully.

To his credit, he thinks, Harvey only hesitates for an instant before he shakes his head.

“When I asked you to move in with me,” he begins, “and you said no, you said it was because the timing wasn’t right. Because I was looking for a quick fix after a bad day.”

Narrowing his eyes, Mike slides his foot back a bit, nervously adjusting his stance.

“What are you doing?”

Fuck the speech; they don’t need it.

“I’m doing exactly what you think I’m doing.”

For a split second, Harvey considers lowering himself down on one knee, but at the moment he’d really prefer to be able to look into Mike’s eyes. The giddy light shining there offsets the otherwise baffled expression on his face, and Harvey wonders how this could possibly be a surprise (though, confidentially, he’s glad that it is).

“Mike Ross.”

“Yes.”

Harvey smirks. “Will—”

“Yes,” Mike interrupts, a dizzying smile spreading across his face. “Holy shit. Yes.”

All his conviction to keep his composure vanishing as an unexpected thrill threatens to crush him, Harvey fits his hands to the sides of Mike’s face and pulls them together in a heady kiss, fitting into place like they were made for it, which, after all this time, Harvey imagines they probably are.

When they part, Harvey turns his head slightly to look Mike in the eye. “Will you marry me?”

“Oh my god…”

Harvey laughs as Mike kisses him again, doing his best to swallow the sound, and Harvey wraps his arms around Mike’s shoulders.

“Just one thing,” Mike says after a second, leaning away with a gravely serious expression on his face that might frighten Harvey under normal circumstances but at the moment doesn’t even phase him.

“Anything you want,” he swears.

Mike tips his chin down slightly, setting his stance. “No destination wedding.”

Harvey’s mind fills with visions of elegance and gold, overabundance and exhibition, and knows without question that Mike deserves something far more meaningful than another flashy gala, that he deserves something intimate, something real. Something with actual meaning, something they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.

“You think Father Walker’s free tomorrow?” he asks impulsively as Mike’s eyes widen in renewed bafflement.

“Are you serious?”

Harvey grins; between the two of them, they do seem to make their best decisions on the spur of the moment.

“If you want to wait, we wait,” he allows, “but to be honest with you, it’s been about thirty seconds and I’m already getting tired of not being married to you.”

“So romantic,” Mike teases. “You know Donna’s going to kill you.”

Maybe.

Or…

“She’ll get over it,” Harvey dismisses as an idea begins to take shape in the back of his mind. “So? What do you want to do?”

Taking a step back, Mike clasps Harvey’s hands in his and quirks his eyebrows shamelessly. “I think you know the answer to that.”

Snorting, Harvey takes one of his hands back to rap Mike on the side of the head. “About the wedding, you punk.”

A smile begins to spread across Mike’s face, but it collapses suddenly as some thought crosses his mind. “We need to wait twenty-four hours after we get our license,” he says dejectedly.

Shit, that’s true. Harvey shrugs, trying to play it off.

“We’ll start making calls tomorrow,” he says. “How about Friday, you think you can wait three more days?”

Mike’s grin returns at once. “I’m not the one trying to rush this,” he observes sanctimoniously, and Harvey resists the urge to cuff him again.

“We’ll swing by the City Clerk’s office tomorrow morning,” he says instead.

As Mike hauls him in for another kiss, Harvey closes his eyes, trying to ignore the part of his brain that automatically begins trying to sort out the logistics of pulling off such a momentous event in such a brief time frame; there’ll be plenty of time for that later, and there are, after all, more important things to focus on at the moment.

\---

“Are you worried about not having a wedding tux?” Harvey asks as he and Mike walk up the front steps to Mike’s old church out in Queens late Friday afternoon.

Mike shrugs, picking at the lapel of his black suit. “You know what, not really,” he says. “I mean, I don’t think Father Walker gives a shit, so who am I trying to impress?”

“There’s me.”

“You already know how hot I am. With or without it,” Mike leers as Harvey rolls his eyes, giving him a little shove down the hall toward Father Walker’s office.

“Get in there.”

Mike skips a little to avoid tripping over himself, pushing the office door open to find Donna, Rachel, and Louis already inside, lined up against the back wall as Father Walker stands behind his desk with a tranquil smile on his face. Louis clasps his hands behind his back and beams as they enter, and Rachel offers a watery smile as Donna sets a supportive hand on her shoulder and looks knowingly at Harvey.

“Welcome,” Father Walker says, gesturing to the small room. “And congratulations; Michael, I know that if they were here today, your parents, and your grandmother, would be tremendously proud of you.”

Surreptitiously, Harvey reaches out to take Mike’s hand, feeling a slight pressure as Mike holds on tight.

“Thank you, Father,” he says firmly.

Father Walker nods.

“Now, gentlemen,” he says in a tone gilded with either admonishment or regret, but Harvey doesn’t know him well enough to tell the difference; “we can skip straight to the vows, if you’d like, or if anyone present has a, a longer speech prepared…”

Looking over with a private smile, Harvey prepares to cede the floor to Mike for an emotional address he’ll claim to have written well ahead of time but will surely make up on the spot. Strangely enough, though, a light blush colors Mike’s cheeks, his eyes darting away from the good priest, and for one horrifying moment, Harvey wonders if this is all an enormous mistake.

No. No, it isn’t. Mike isn’t the type to give into Harvey’s requests, or his propositions, or even his demands if he doesn’t really want to; he never would’ve agreed to such a speedy wedding if he wasn’t dying to be married as much as Harvey is. So then what’s the problem? It isn’t the idea of professing his love in front of their friends, who know them as well as anyone, who know how much they adore each other, and it isn’t the idea of coming up with a speech off the top of his head, which is something he does all the time, no matter how often Harvey tries to instill in him the value of thorough preparedness.

Harvey subtly glances around the room, at the walls lined with religious texts and Father Walker’s various diplomas and certifications, the secular artwork and the dim lighting, and this might be the most efficient, the easiest way to accomplish their task, but making vows to one another here won’t mean much, not really. This isn’t the part of their wedding day that he wants to remember, this technicality, this impersonal formality; Mike is probably afraid of offending Father Walker, but Harvey, who’s met the man perhaps twice before in his life, has no such reservations.

“We’ll be taking care of that later on,” Harvey informs him, gripping Mike’s hand tight for a small reassurance. “Thank you.”

Father Walker nods precisely once, giving Harvey an assessing look that he tries his best to ignore as Mike smiles weakly.

“Alright,” he says after a moment, “well then; do you, Harvey,” he glances down at the license in front of him, “Reginald Specter, take this man to be your husband?”

Harvey schools his expression carefully to make sure the words come out level.

“I do.”

“And do you, Michael James Ross, take this man to be your husband?”

Mike turns to Harvey, a tiny smile pursing his lips.

“I absolutely do.”

Father Walker smiles warmly. “By the power vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you—married.”

Rachel claps excitedly, and Donna sniffles as Louis turns away to dab at his eyes; Harvey only catches the movements at the very edge of his vision as Mike fits his hands around Harvey’s jaw, drawing him in and kissing him deeply.

“Congratulations,” Father Walker says again as they begin to part. “I’ll mail the licensing paperwork first thing tomorrow; now,” he turns to their guests lined up against the back wall, “which of you will be serving as the witness to this union?”

Louis begins to raise his hand, but Donna steps forward before he can get a word out, taking the pen Father Walker holds out and signing by the X. She hands it off to Mike and Harvey to sign where Father Walker indicates before they all but flee the office, their nervous energy suddenly too much to contain in the compact space.

“So,” Mike says. “You’re my husband.”

Harvey nods, turning the word over in his mind. “Sure am.”

“Oh, that was deep.”

“No, sorry,” Harvey says quickly, “I just— I’ve never really thought of myself as the marrying type before. I love you, but I guess I still haven’t exactly put two and two together.”

Mike reaches out to thread their fingers together as they start back down the hall.

“I love you, too.”

Out on the street, they slide into the backseat of the idling Lexus, keeping their hands clasped on the seat between them and alternating between looking out the windows and over at each other. At the entrance to the Queensboro Bridge, their gazes happen to meet, and Mike offers a somewhat shallow grin before quickly turning away.

“Hey,” Harvey says, jostling their hands. “What’s wrong?”

Mike shrugs, his smile becoming a shade forced. “Nothing,” he says. “I’m glad we’re married, I’m glad we didn’t wait, I just sort of…” He sighs. “I don’t know, I guess I wish we could’ve done…something.”

Harvey sighs quietly, raising their clasped hands to his mouth. “I know,” he says softly. “I’m sorry. We’ll figure something out.”

His clumsy smile falling away, Mike leans back until he’s resting against Harvey’s shoulder, looking comfortably out the window as they pull out onto fifty-ninth street.

A couple of minutes later, he tips his head back, looking upside down into Harvey’s eyes.

“Do you think Ray knows we missed the turnoff?”

Harvey looks out the window over his head. “Huh,” he observes, “I guess we did.”

Mike pulls their joined hands around to rest on his stomach. “We’re not going home, are we?”

“Mm,” Harvey hums, pressing his lips to Mike’s hair, “I have no idea what you mean.”

It’s only another minute before they turn on fifty-seventh and Ray pulls up in front of the Chilton, and Mike laughs under his breath.

“You are the cheesiest guy I know.”

Tipping Mike’s face up towards his, Harvey presses a gentle kiss to his lips, smiling smugly as they part.

“You married me.”

“You bet I did.”

Climbing out of the car, Harvey leans close to Mike’s ear as they walk toward the hotel’s front doors.

“For Donna’s sake,” he murmurs, “pretend to be surprised.”

Mike sniffs, tilting his head from side to side.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Yeah. They’ll be fine.

\---

Folding down the corner of the brushed cotton blanket, Harvey opens his arms to welcome Mike into his embrace, tucking them both in under the covers and nestling against the stack of down pillows at their backs. Mike sets his hand against Harvey’s shoulder in a sort of mimicry of a hug, and Harvey brushes his fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“You have fun?” he asks as Mike slides his arm down to drape it across Harvey’s chest.

“I can’t believe she pulled that together in three days,” Mike marvels for at least the fifth time tonight. “Doesn’t it take at least a week to bake a cake that fancy?”

“Mike,” Harvey admonishes, “these people are professionals.”

“Mm.” Mike looks up at him with a teasing grin. “How much did you pay them?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Harvey leans in to kiss him softly. “Sorry we couldn’t have a big ceremony.”

“Are you kidding?” Mike presses down on the mattress to raise himself up over Harvey and stare at him. “This was so much better than a big ceremony. This was all the—the fun parts, but without any of the parading around and…running lines. And I mean I’m glad Father Walker did the wedding, but he doesn’t know you; what was he going to say, that I’ve grown up a lot since high school? Besides,” he brushes off, “the important people were there for the ceremony.”

Harvey skates his hand around the shell of Mike’s ear. “Jessica?”

“No,” Mike says, “I wouldn’t’ve been able to concentrate, I would’ve been too surprised to see her. No, Harvey, seriously, this was…incredible. Today was fantastic. Our friends are amazing. _You’re_ amazing. I love you, so much. I never, ever, in a billion years, would’ve ever imagined I could have ended up where I am.”

Smiling warmly, Harvey wraps his arm around Mike’s back and urges him down to lie against his chest, peering up like an excitable puppy.

“No regrets?” he teases. Mike smiles wide, laughing quietly, but the sound fades away as uncertainty steals over his expression; Harvey tucks his fingers under Mike’s chin, tilting his face up to meet his gaze as a frown lines his forehead.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Mike says at once. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Harvey drops his hand away and arches his brow skeptically, and Mike lowers his eyes.

“Nothing,” he repeats. “It’s just…”

A knot forming in his stomach, Harvey manages to count all the way up to six before Mike finishes his thought.

“Those were really great speeches,” he says finally, “what everyone said at the party, Jessica and Donna and Louis and Katrina— Actually, I was thinking, we should see if we can hire her, if she’s unhappy at RKZ—”

“Mike.”

“Right.” Mike smiles sheepishly, his shoulders hunching up near his ears. “The thing is, while, while everyone was talking, I kept thinking about what kind of speech I wanted to give, or, what I could say that would be…right, that would fit, and everything I thought of wasn’t really good for a party. It was all… It was all about you.”

Harvey shifts back against the pillows, readjusting the blanket tucked around his waist. Well, the party was meant to celebrate their wedding, after all; what would be so bad about a speech about his husband?

A speech about Harvey.

“You wanted to do vows,” he murmurs as Mike turns away shyly.

“See, it’s nothing,” he protests, “it’s stupid. Today was perfect.”

“Mike.” Harvey presses his hand to Mike’s cheek, turning him forward and looking him right in the eye. “Mike.”

Mike swallows. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to go first or should I?”

Slowly, piece by piece, Mike relaxes down against Harvey, his embarrassment and fear slipping into excitement, into happiness and adoration, his eyes sparkling as the words begin to stitch together in his mind. Shaking his head, he bites his lip on a little grin.

“I— You go first.”

Harvey nods.

“Michael James Ross,” he says, the feel of the words somehow new in his mouth as he speaks them all in a row, the meaning of them something different than before. “Meeting you, getting to know you, being with you has been…one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. That ever could’ve happened to me.”

He smiles as Mike blinks a couple of times. “And for all the shit you’ve put me through—” Mike laughs thickly, and Harvey shakes his head, “—you’ve done so much more to help me, and make me happy, and I know that my life is so much better, because you’re in it.”

For one achingly taught moment, Harvey thinks Mike is going to start crying—blame it on the late hour, or one too many glasses of champagne—but he lunges forward to kiss him instead, wrapping one of his arms around Harvey’s shoulders and bracing the other on the headboard behind him. Harvey meets him fervently, holding on tight to fight back the sudden fear that they’re about to fall off the bed even though they’re bracketed by at least two feet of space on either side.

Mike pants heavily when he draws away, his eyes still fixed on Harvey’s lips, and Harvey leans in to kiss him one more time before he sits back and clears his throat, wiping his eyes even though he certainly wasn’t crying (it’s just that it’s nearly one in the morning).

“Harvey Reginald Specter,” Mike says then, only managing to look Harvey in the eye at the tail end of the sentence. “From the moment you made the— _incredibly_ stupid decision to take a chance on me—” Harvey narrows his eyes, and Mike reaches out to take his hand, “—from the moment you took me under your wing, you’ve looked out for me, and protected me, and gone so, so far above and beyond what I deserved to help me get everything I’ve ever wanted.”

Harvey smiles, and Mike clears his throat again. “And you know, and I know, that sometimes life is hard, and bad shit happens, and it’s messy, and stupid, and it sucks. But sometimes it doesn’t; sometimes you find someone who brings out the best of everything, and when you’re with that person, you can handle anything that life throws at you. And I would really, really like to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Harvey knows the feeling. Crooking his fingers under Mike’s chin, he draws him in for another kiss.

“Thank you.”

Mike grins, lowering himself down to curl up against Harvey’s side. “Thank _you._ ”

“Mm.” Closing his eyes, Harvey takes a deep breath and settles back against the pillows.

“Let’s go to Buenos Aires for the weekend.”

Mike bumps the top of his head against Harvey’s shoulder.

“I love you.”

Slipping his fingers through Mike’s hair, Harvey takes another breath, feeling remarkably at peace. The best of everything, did he say?

Yeah. Sounds about right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I need you to babysit the client until I get there. Don’t mention the deal. She asks any questions, just nod your head and look pretty.”  
> —Harvey, “[Bail Out](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s01e05)” (s01e05)
> 
> “What are we gonna do?”  
> “We’ve got no choice. We have to leave the country.”  
> “What?”  
> “I can get us two tickets to Buenos Aires and have the chopper on the helipad in 10 minutes.”  
> —Mike and Harvey, “[She Knows](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s02e01)” (s02e01)
> 
> In “[Teeth, Nose, Teeth](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s06e13)” (s06e13), Mike says that he and Rachel “just wanna keep [the wedding] small, intimate”; though I’m sure Harvey would love to show off his husband with an opulent gala, I decided to split the difference to keep the actual ceremony on the small side with the elaborate party afterwards.
> 
> I was Not Impressed with the premarital counseling Father Walker gave to Mike and Rachel, so I wasn’t inclined to be particularly kind to him in his brief cameo here. I’m not trying to portray him as homophobic or anything, just…not an awesome officiant. In his defense, though, he probably doesn’t appreciate being asked to officiate a wedding with only two days’ notice. (Maybe that’s why canon left the homily out of Mike and Rachel’s wedding?)
> 
> It takes 24 hours (waiting period) and $35 (fee payable to the City Clerk) to obtain a marriage license in New York City. Even pretending that it’s realistic for Donna to have prepared Mike and Rachel’s wedding from scratch, including Rachel’s dress, in a single day, six weeks ahead of schedule, it’s unlikely that the marriage is legal since I doubt they took care of the license so far in advance; even if they did, the City Clerk’s office is closed on Saturdays, so they wouldn’t be able to file it until the following Monday, when they’d already be in Seattle.
> 
> All in all, I tried to derive a slightly less disgustingly saccharine and extremely rushed wedding while still keeping with the spirit of a very sweet and quite impromptu wedding that was at least _kind of_ plausible.
> 
> The [West 57th Street Hilton Club](http://www3.hilton.com/en/hotels/new-york/west-57th-street-by-hilton-club-NYCWEGV/index.html) is standing in for the Chilton Hotel, which doesn’t exist but if it did would be somewhere near 55th street.
> 
> Larson, E. (2015). _Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania_. United States: Crown Publishers.


End file.
